Honestly, where does the time go? HOW does it go? I only know that it goes quickly.

I have two jobs, and because I love them both so very, very much, time flies by. I’m sure there is something Einsteinian about it, but explaining it is beyond me.

Perhaps it has something to do with the example of the stove: when you sit on a cold stove with a handsome guy, an hour seems like a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove, a minute seems like an hour. Or something like that. . . .

I’m messing up badly; let’s look at some REAL quotations by people who knew what they were doing.

1. “An open foe may prove a curse, but a pretended friend is worse.” –John Gay

2. “Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.” –Alexander Pope

3. ” ‘It can’t happen here’ is number one on the list of famous last words.” –David Crosby

4. “No matter what a man’s past may have been, his future is spotless.” –John R. Rice

5. “There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.” –Andre Gide

6. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” –Jason Kaufmann

7. “A man never knows what a fool he is until he hears himself imitated by one.” –Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree

8. “The only people who never fail are those who never try.” –Ilka Chase

9. “There is no fun in having nothing to do; the fun is having lots to do and not doing it.” –Francis Herbert Bradley

10. “It is the familiar that usually eludes us in life. What is before our nose is what we see last.” –Prof. William Barrett

11. “Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.” –Jessamyn West

12. “A fly, sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince, but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.” -Samuel Johnson

13. “It is the spirit of the age to believe that any fact, no matter how suspect, is superior to any imaginative exercise, no matter how true.” –Gore Vidal

14. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” –Samuel Beckett

15. “From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.” –Denis Diderot

16. “Nice guys may finish last, but they finish.” –Washington DC safety slogan, 1967

17. “I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education.” –Wilson Mizner

18. “We are all of us failures – at least, the best of us are.” –Sir James Barrie

19. “Only fools and dead men don’t change their minds. Fools won’t and dead men can’t.” –John H. Patterson

20. “The best part of the fiction in many novels is the notice that the characters are all purely imaginary.” –Franklin Pierce Adams

21. “There are two freedoms: the false, where on eis free to do what he likes, and the true, where he is free to do what he ought.” –Charles Kingsley

22. “I never blame failure – there are too many complicated situations in life – but I am absolutely merciless towards lack of effort.” –Francis Scott Key

23. “Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.” –Nehru

24. “We create our own fate every day we live.” –Henry Miller

25. “News is the first rough draft of history.” –Ben Bradlee

26. “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.” –Amos Bronson Alcott

27. “When they come downstairs from their ivory towers, idealists are apt to walk straight into the gutter.” –Logan Pearsall Smith

28. “There is always one more imbecile than you counted on.” –Anon.

29. “The harpsichord sounds like two skeltons copulating on a corrugated tin roof.” –Sir Thomas Beecham

30. “The best things and best people rise out of their separateness. I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.” Robert Frost

31. “There are people who have money, and there are people who are rich.” –Coco Chanel

32. “There’s nothing so dangerous for manipulators as people who think for themselves.” –Meg Greenfield

33. “The reason the way of the transgressor is hard is because it’s so crowded.” –Kin Hubbard

34. “I know the people you mean: they are all brains and theory and can’t sew on a button.” –G.C. Lichtenberg

35. “That scholarship which consists in the memorization of facts does not qualify one to be a teacher.” –Confucius

36. “You will never ‘find’ time for anything. If you want time you must make it.” –Charles Buxton

37. “There is plenty of room at the top, but not enough to sit down.” –Fred Sharp

38. “I kissed my first woman and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I have never had time for tobacco since.” –Arturo Toscanini

39. “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” –Jacques Barzun

40. “The times are not as bad as they seem; they couldn’t be.” –John Franklin Carter

41. “Men don’t care what’s on TV. They are about what else is on TV.” –Orson Welles

42. “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things – a chance word, a tap on the shoulder, or a penny dropped on a news stand – I am tempted to think. . . there are no little things.” –Bruce Barton

43. “The world does not require so much to be informed, as reminded.” –Hannah More

44. “The time is always right to do what is right.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

45. “The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” –Lily Tomlin

46. “He who limps still walks.” –Stanislaw Led

47. “The less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag.” –Kin Hubbard

48. “Although the world is very full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” –Helen Keller

49. “Before there can be wonders, there must be wonder.” –Anon.

50. “We are told that when Jehovah created the world, He saw that it was good. What would He say now?” –George Bernard Shaw

Fifty is a good, round number. There was even a time when I thought it was a large number. I remember when my mother turned thirty; I thought she was on her last legs. Then I turned thirty and the thoughts that ran through my mind were more like this: How could I be this old? I’m still amazed that my friends and I can DRIVE! I can’t remember my locker combination!! I didn’t know we were having a test today! Forty wasn’t really all that bad; I was still flailing helplessly inside my head about driving and combination locks. Besides, at thirty and forty, my children took up all my energy and there really wasn’t any “me.” But fifty? How is even that number any different? I still have nightmares about not being able to remember my gym locker combination! And even now, the principal’s office scares me.

I wonder if anyone ever really considers the principal’s office a room like any other. I bet even the principal looks around his/her own office sometimes and hopes nobody calls his/her mother and tattles.

Okay, I just remembered how fifty is different from forty and thirty. Darn mirror.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

Sometimes, a person just needs to hear The Logical Song. I know I do. I’m listening to it right now, in fact.

I hate it that the world is not fair. It ought to be fair! I hate it that children must eventually learn that the world is not fair. I wish our kids didn’t have to lose so much innocence, but I’m not sure which is worse: an adult who is dangerously naive for his/her age, or an adult who has lost ALL innocence.

I do think, however, that our society has somehow evolved into a scenario that not only asks us to relinquish our innocence, but actually encourages us to do so while still young enough that we’re supposed to still have it. I also believe that our society has DEvolved into a scenario wherein people who choose to give it away are considered enlightened and savvy, while people who choose to be chaste and pure until such time. . . are considered backward and provincial.

I sincerely believe that some people try to rationalize their own sketchy ethics and lack of self-control by putting down other people who have more will power and honor.

The Logical Song, by Supertramp

When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,
Joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
Logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
Clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world’s asleep,
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical,
Liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re
Acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!

At night, when all the worlds asleep,
The questions run so deep
For such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
But please tell me who I am.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly

A post in two parts: The bragging, and the bitching.

Part I: Bragging

My daughter is cool. Smart, savvy, funny, and, well, COOL.

She isn’t a person who is easily fooled, or sidetracked, or conned into believing that people who follow their hormones around like an ass follows a dangling carrot have anything important to say about “choice.” I mean, other than it’s all about THEM and what they want NOW and how any consequences aren’t THEIR FAULT and society should GET RID OF THEM at TAXPAYER EXPENSE, blah blah blah cry me a river and if you’d keep your legs closed you wouldn’t be knocked up blah blah blah etc, I don’t care. Wah wah wah, I don’t understand biology! How did this happen? Somebody pay for it! Boo hoo, asking people to think before they act is such an insult, blah blah blah, we’re back in the dark ages if we have to be accountable for our own actions, CHOICE CHOICE CHOICE CONSEQUENCES CONSEQUENCES CONSEQUENCES, wahhh boo hoo, blah blah blah, shut up. Seriously. Please do.

My daughter is SMART. Mamacita don’t raise them OTHER kind.

That’s my girl. I adore her.

Now, back to me.

Um, I’m not all that cool. But I like to hang out with people who are!

Too bad “cool” doesn’t rub off. Sigh.

Speaking of “cool,” I’m rooming with akaMonty at Blogher next month! Fausta will be there, too!
And lots of other lovely, lovely people I’ve waited my whole blogging life to meet! (Hey, 4 1/2 years is a LONG TIME!)

I love blogging and I love BlogHer and I plan to love everybody there, too!

Part II: Bitching

One other thing, while I’m ranting. . . .

American Airlines didn’t kick the screaming, raving, rolling-in-the-aisle toddler off the plane because he was autistic. The kid and his mother were removed because he was screaming, raving, and rolling in the aisles, and because the mother at first refused to put her bag in the overhead compartment (It’s got his TOYS in it!), and because both got all bothered because the flight attendant was doing her job, which means, checking to make sure all the seatbelts were fastened properly. The attendant was perfectly justified in coming back several times to re-tighten the kid’s belt because the kid kept loosening it and trying to run away, and his mother wasn’t tightening it. I know it’s hard, parenting an autistic child, but this incident isn’t about autism. It’s about airplane safety, and the rights of other people. This woman says that her family will “never fly American again!!!” (wahhh) Good. I’ve never cared for American Airlines either, but after this, I might give them another go.

I think that people often go completely off when they hear about a special needs person who isn’t allowed to do something other people are doing, without first checking out what really happened. Any person whose behavior puts other people at risk simply can’t be allowed to be there. Period.

Personally, I HATE being on a plane (or anywhere else) with an out-of-control person, and I really don’t care about his/her age, size, ethnicity, gender, or any letters of the alphabet that might be in his/her medical or permanent record file. I was once on a plane with a grown woman who freaked out and insisted that all the window shades be closed because looking at the ground made her sick.

I’m sure all those people who were enjoying the scenery loved her for that one.

The flight attendants refused to make that request and the woman actually WAILED, all the way to Denver. I feel bad that nobody felt sorry for her. (Not really; I still hate her.) (Such presumption!)

Again, I’m sorry as I can be for this family. But I do not believe they were treated unfairly in any way.

Shhhh, I think I can hear all the other passengers, past, present, and future, from every airline in the universe, applauding. . . .

Okay, parents, let me have it! You know you want to. I’m not going to budge an inch, and neither are you, so this should be good.

Apparently, many of the parenting, autism, and special needs forums are going bonkers about the airline’s shoddy treatment of this kid. I think these people need to get their facts straight. This has nothing whatsoever to do with special needs, and everything to do with safety, adherence to the regulations, and the rights of EVERYBODY ELSE IN THE PLANE.

Special needs or not: if your kid can’t behave and you can’t make him, drive your own car. Don’t inflict that on the rest of the world and then be all outraged because accommodations that would actually endanger the child and everyone else, aren’t made, just for YOUUUUUU.

What’s the next step? Removing the peanuts? Because, what’s a flight without the peanuts?

As long as I’m infuriating people anyway, I think the church was in the right, too.

You know, I’m nice, really I am. I just think everyone else should be, too. Or else.

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly