Cleveland is overcast and industrial. On the way to the car dealership from the hotel, all I saw was manufacturing companies and pavement. After the paperwork on the car was done and I headed to the hotel, all I saw off the freeways was grey asphalt and greyer buildings. All this under a grey and lightly snowing sky.

So far, this town has been the very definition of “melancholy.” The cluster of restaurants nearby the hotel, including Denny’s, each have bright and inviting neon signs inside and out, as if to say “It’s not grey and depressing in here - come on in!”

Which I will be doing soon, because on a 2-1/2 hour flight on United, all they serve is iced oatmeal cookies and a beverage. I miss the good old days of air travel, when passengers weren’t packed in like sardines and treated to an experience that has all the pizzazz and panache of a ride on a Greyhound Bus. Flying used to be a customer service-oriented special event. People dressed up to get on a plane. The airlines served actual meals. Just to go back, I’d even eat some of it now … the very airline food that spawned all thosed standup jokes for a decade or so. *sigh*

The car is great, but that’s not what’s on my mind, obviously. I’ll be exploring downtown Cleveland a little tomorrow morning. Perhaps it’s not as grey as what I’ve seen so far and it will inspire a happier post.

Yeah, I’m not betting on it, either.

I’m flying out to Cleveland tomorrow morning to pick up my new car. You can see it here if you like, but beware the green monster … even people I like have fallen into bouts of envy over such things. Which is a tad ridiculous, really, since this car cost less than most 2006 models available now.

More than that, though, this car is ALL MINE. I qualified for the loan with no co-signer. All by my lonesome. It will be registered to me and no one else.

This is not the first car for which I’ve been the sole owner, nor is it the first car on which I’ve qualified for a loan by myself; it is, however, the first luxury car I’ve bought on my own. It took me a long time to get here and you can imagine I’m ecstatically happy about it.

I’m proud of myself and only wish to share my joy with you by writing about it here. If you take it as bragging or if you’re one of those people who has to bitch, whine, piss, and moan about my ability to work hard and afford such things, do me a favor and fuck off.

You could, too. You just don’t want to work that hard.

Truth hurts, slacker.

Run out and get Roy Orbison: A Black & White Night on DVD. It’s available at Amazon.

The big scary goth Dominatrix is into all kinds of music, especially if it’s THIS good.

But I was wrong!

This morning on the way out of the gym - at 9:00am - I spotted a homeless guy picking through the garbage on the 16th Street Mall. He chose only beer bottles and sucked down whatever was left in the bottom of each one before tossing it back into the bin.

Desperation is never pretty. Evidently it smells bad, too.

One can live without morals, but it’s best to maintain some standards while doing so.

If there is a Satan, he is an underachiever.

My big toenails are almost grown back.

Thought you’d want to know.

Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor for December 20, 2005 had this to say about Brokeback Mountain:

But I don’t care about the movie. I’m going to make the prediction. The movie will get a lot of Academy Awards, because again Hollywood is very sympathetic to the gay movement … But I will submit to you this movie does not do big box office outside the big cities. It won’t. They’re not going to go see the gay cowboys in Montana. I’m sorry. They’re not going to do it.

Brokeback Mountain was made for $14 million. It has played on 1/2 as many screens (<1,000) as most movies; for instance Narnia and Underworld: Evolution both premiered on 2,000+ screens nationwide.

Brokeback isn’t even in what is known as “wide release” yet and has grossed $42 million to date. Therefore, its profit is now at 200% and it will probably go up if it wins the Academy Award this year.

Bill was wrong. Sure, he’ll never admit it, but it’s nice to know it happens.

[I felt like crap yesterday and didn’t post this when I was supposed to do it. *shrug* At least it’s here.]

In 1988, at age 21, I had my first and only abortion.

Surprised? I know my father will be, because – to the best of my knowledge – he never knew about it. I don’t believe my mom knew before she passed away in 1997 and I certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Being the oldest of their own children, it would have been their first chance to be grandparents. Far be it from me to make an announcement like, “Hey, I’m pregnant with your first grandkid,” and then take it away from them. Of course, neither of them knew about my sister’s repeat offenses at the free clinic, either.

I had a hard enough time trying to convince my then-husband that the kid was his, which he never really believed. In all honesty, I was completely unsure he was the father, but he was my only stability back then, and the insurance which still covered me as his legally-married wife would cover ½ the cost of the procedure. This was selfish, yes, but it was also practical.

I was married at 18, which I didn’t understand at the time was my way of getting out of my parent’s house. More than that, I was a very angry little girl. I didn’t know why I was so full of rage, but I only got angrier as time went by. My husband didn’t help, either, because his entire life seemed to be spent telling me I’d never amount to much. If I was working full-time, he’d tell me I needed to go to school to make more money. So I quit to attend school full-time, but then I wasn’t making money at all and that simply wouldn’t do, either. I did both for about 4 months, but then I wasn’t taking good enough care of the house. You get the idea.

Then, one weekend, I had an anger blackout on him. When I came out of it, the room was in shambles and he had a bruise on his face. So, at age 21, I thought it would help if I moved out of our condo and into an apartment with a friend for awhile, to figure things out. I kept telling him, and myself, that it would all be over soon, that I’d move back home as soon as I discovered what was wrong with me.

What I found was that I had been lying to everyone, including myself, about going back. I was 21 years old and I was living and working – and partying, very, very hard – in Los Angeles. I had been pent up in the role of the “good wife” for so long, I exploded. I did a fair amount of cocaine. I regularly went to work on 2 hours (or less) of sleep. I went to happy hour with the people from the office and didn’t leave until closing time. I tripped on psychedelics every chance I got. I drove to Vegas at every opportunity, sometimes so broke I could only afford gas and had to sleep in the car for the duration of the trip. In short, I became your typical 20-something party girl, the kind that I find so distasteful and irritating now. (I’m not jealous, I just wish they – and I – had more class at that age, but this particular wisdom always arrives late in life.)

One of the neighbors in the apartment complex where I lived was a total cokehead and a partier, so my roommate and I (and a lot of other folks) would spend time at his place on the weekends. One sunny, Sunday morning, I woke up in his apartment, hungover and obviously freshly sexed.

Ooops.

My mother taught me when my period started that the measure of your love for a man is whether or not you’d be willing to undergo the pain of having his child. By that measure, when my period was late, I didn’t think twice. I was not ready to be a parent and I certainly did not love anyone – husband or neighbor – enough to have his kid. Hell, I’m still not ready to have them. I didn’t debate or weigh pros and cons, because there weren’t any. I was not going to have a baby, anyone’s baby, and that was the final answer on the subject.

This is not one of those super-syrupy, “ultimate regret” stories, so if you’re looking for sentimentality, best go log on to someone else’s blog right about now. I don’t want your feelings to be hurt, especially if you are a woman who regrets her choice to have an abortion at one time or another in your life.

Instead, let me tell you a truth which a lot of women will never admit, not even to themselves: I have never regretted my choice. I did not cry. I did not grieve. I had an abortion and I simply went on with my life.

Years later, when my mother was dying, it occurred to me briefly that I’d have had a 9 year old child at that moment if I had not aborted. However, unlike stories I’ve read and tales I’ve heard from other women, the realization did not make me break down, nor did it fill me with regret.

Even now I think about the kid I’d be sending off to college and I know that having him/her would have been the wrong thing to do. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong mother, wrong father, wrong everything.

My sister had her first baby last year, at age 35, and it is the best thing that has ever happened for her and her husband. She is right, too, that opinions (and a lot of other things) change once you’ve had a child of your own. Don’t think I haven’t considered that little bit of wisdom, but would I have another abortion if I got pregnant now?

You bet I would. It’s hard for me to think about how much I love the man I’m with and yet know I do not want to have his child, because I can still hear my mother’s words echoing in my head: “If you love him that much … ” My mother was always telling me to clean my plate, too, because there were “ … starving children in Asia,” which created a whole set of food issues requiring a separate and different blahg post.

Not every woman can make a choice like mine, but more importantly, I wouldn’t expect all women to do what I did. Some women regret their decision to have an abortion for the rest of their lives and, while I feel for them, I know in my heart that their truth is not mine. I had an abortion and I went on with my life. If that fact makes you upset, maybe you shouldn’t be worried about me at all. Maybe you should wonder, instead, why an abortion that happened in 1988 to someone you don’t even know upsets you so much. The fact that I would have an abortion now may inspire you to anger, but it is strictly a hypothetical since the chances of my needing one are somewhere between “slim” and “none.”

Further, if you believe that life begins at conception, great. I do not. The “I am he as you are he as you are me” schtick only applies to The Walrus. We are not interchangeable, each with the exact same life, dreams, hopes, and fears. We are independent with a free will given by our creator(s). Each woman has her own opinions, beliefs, values, emotions, and judgments. Where we run into trouble is when you believe your opinions, beliefs, values, emotions, and judgments should be mine and, further, that they should be legislated by our government to be the same for everyone.

I don’t like the government in my bedroom and I certainly don’t want them anywhere near my uterus. Not without lots of condoms, anyway, and since they’re nearly all on an “abstinence only” kick, I’m sure it wouldn’t be as much fun as one imagines, even with heroic doses of Viagra.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t believe what you believe, but please stop trying to force other people to believe as you do, whether that’s me or your Congressman. It’s a much more tolerable (and tolerant) world when people live by example, when actions have a chance to speak louder. You know, when we all live like Christians and Muslims and Mormons and Buddhists and Hindus are supposed to live, including the fundamentalist and/or evangelical ones.

If I’m going to dream, I’ll do it big.

Our illustrious President, George W., made a speech today in which he defended his administration’s listening in on phone conversations and e-mails going to suspected terrorists.

What you may not know (or want to know) is that he is 100% correct that such behavior by a president is not technically illegal. He is correct that the US courts, for many years, have repeatedly decided in his favor on this question. But before you get a rope and string me up, hear me out.

George W. has spent a lot of time convincing me that he does not give a damn about me, you, how his actions affect us, or the lengths the people in his own administration will go to see their ideas / ideals / ideology implemented. I am consistently disgusted at his tactics and insistence on things which are clearly wrong to me, such as we went to Iraq because there was an Al-Quaeda connection, US medical aid to other countries should be pulled if they even mention birth control (no matter how overpopulated and starving they are), his idea that the Consitution should be changed to “protect” us from gay marriage, Saddam had WMD’s, and his firm belief that “abstinence only” education will lower the birth rate here. My final straw was hearing his phone call in support of the anti-choice forces in Washington, DC yesterday.

Here is how I see his tactics in this newest public relations nightmare will play out:

He got the NSA to listen in on phone calls of average Americans on the pretense of helping to stop terrorism.

The US citizens who were targets of this probe are upset about it.

A large number of US citizens who were not targets are upset about it, too.

The Democrats have jumped on this as an issue of privacy and Congressional hearings begin in a week.

While Mr. Bush is technically and perhaps legally right, the perception of the situation among the American people is not in step with his own (again), as most of us do not understand how something can be both legal and unethical simultaneously.

He will continue to push his position, refusing to see that ethics do count to the citizens of this country.

His true belief may possibly be his final downfall, as those of us who have watched the depths to which he’ll dive begin work to help him drown. For instance, I had let go of my membership a couple of years ago, but I re-joined the ACLU today. Then I donated money to Pro-Choice America. I don’t claim to be a Republican or a Democrat, but I will be seeking candidates here locally, regardless of party affiliation, who are more moderate (or even - gasp! - Libertarian) and help them with their campaign(s).

I am tired of this particular True Believer. He and those who also believe in his cause(s) continually step on my ideology and my beliefs of what is right and what is wrong, what is sound decision making and what is an obvious lie. They will do anything to see their own values, ethics, opinions, and beliefs become law and, most importantly, it doesn’t matter if you don’t agree.

George W. and his buddies don’t care about you or me or what we think. Their entire lives are committed to seeing that their beliefs become the law of the land and that, as they say, is that.

If Iwanted the type of government for which this adminstration keeps fighting, I’d live in a monarchy.

All hail King George.