LOVING KINDNESS MY ASS!

My sole New Year's Resolution for 2008 was to start meditating... Why? I guess I just feel like it could bring calm and peace to my life and stuff like that. That's what they say, anyway. So I went to a class/lecture that was on "Why Meditate?" and I realized this was going to be a LOT harder than I thought...

First of all, you're supposed to practice LOVING KINDNESS. That's right. You're supposed to love that annoying lady at the drycleaner and that homeless guy who always dumps everything out of your recycling bin. The list goes on. Because there are, what, about 6 billion people on earth right now? And you're supposed to love ALL of them?? One of the teachers there told me you don't have to love them as much as your family, and I thought, well that's a relief, sometimes it's a struggle just to LIKE some of them!

And there were other bumps in the road: Buddhism (or at least this flavour of it) teaches that ALL happiness comes from within. So then I asked the teacher, "If all happiness comes from within, then what's the point of having close relationships?" She had an answer for me, of course, which was that it was good practice for loving everyone else. Plus, she said, you probably have a karmic connection with your friends and sig-ohs. Hmmmm.... I see...

THEN, the teacher made the point that no one LIKES to be angry or unhappy. Well, I quite disagree on that point. People LOVE being miserable. And angry. And hell, yes, I'm one of them! Do I enjoy yelling at people, honking at them, cursing? You betcha! Does it silently take years off my life? Perhaps... But I don't smoke, I drink moderately, and I've never even tried cocaine. And, I floss! Nightly! So aren't I entitled to a vice? You don't have to answer that. In fact, please don't.

I don't know... I like a lot of the tenets of Buddhism, but when I get around some of the more devout followers, I can't help picking up on just another cultish vibe that I get with most any religious practice. I start to get self conscious. Am I sitting right? Am I breathing right? Do I seem sincere--I sure as hell hope so, because on the inside, I'm thinking, "Let someone into my lane in traffic? When hell freezes the fuck over!"

Does anything I'm saying make sense? Or are you about to throw me into the fastest vehicle available and rush me to the nearest monastery? Perhaps you should. Perhaps this has been a cry for help. Well, anyway, whatever it was, it's been a LOT of fun. I feel relaxed now. Strangely at peace. As though I've just.... meditated. Ohhhhhhhmmmmmmmm.....

...ANYONE STILL WONDERING WHAT'S WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY?

Maybe it's just me, but I guess I really don't feel comfortable seeing the "president" yukking it up with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. I know they're like, BFF and everything, but it just seems to me that in a country where a teenage girl gets sentenced to lashings and jail time for being gang raped, maybe Georgie boy should try not to be having so darn much fun. I know, I know, he has to suck up to Abdy, since that guy's got all the precious oil we need and everything, and it would probably look bad if Bushy whined and said, "i'm not gonna come out to play in your country 'til you be nice to girls." I mean, Bush has a wife and a mother (or is she his grandmother) and two daughters. How can even that Australopithecene stand for such behavior? I'm no feminazi or anything, but I would bet my entire $305 dollars that if some man had been treated abhorrently in that country (unless of course, we were mistreating them ourselves at Guantanamo Bay--that would be different) and it made the national news circuit, that Bush wouldn't have posed for that prom picture with King Abdullah. He might not have even shown up.

All I'm saying is, maybe taking a stand for women's rights in medieval countries like Saudi Arabia might be a step in the right direction of encouraging freedom and democracy. It might be a little bit cheaper and more effective to defend women than to make threats, search for non-existent nukes, and drop bombs. And even if it were somewhat incendiary to stand up for the female species in a place like that, wouldn't defending women be an inherently more worthy cause than all of our other flame-fanning efforts thus far?

The funny thing about the picture is -- other than the fact that Bushy is holding a sword, and where's Abdy's gift from him by the way?--is his posture. Because, while he's holding one sword, his posture makes him kinda looks like he's got another one up his bum. Nah' mean? But my BIG question is, with all of the tightened new homeland security and TSA regulations, how did Bushy take that sword back with him on the plane? And more importantly, does he have to go through security in his socks like the rest of us?

DESYNCHRONOSIS

Yes, I might as well get it out in the open... I have been diagnosed with desynchronosis. At the moment, it really seems quite serious. I hope I will recover...
Is it worse than ADD, OCD, or any other sort of D? Well, in the long run, no. It's actually just good ol' fashion JETLAG. And I've got it bad, having just returned from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Japan.

I wish I could take a picture of my tired self to share with you right now, but the sad truth is, we broke our lovely camera on our first day in Vietnam, and I've been subsisting on horrible disposable cameras ever since. But just picture me for yourself: Droopy eyelids, sunken eyes, permafrown, slightly hunched over... Yup, that's me. I thought we were on schedule last night when we went to sleep at midnight, but then, when I awoke at three o'clock this afternoon, I realized just how wrong I was.

Goddamn international date line!

So I'm gonna ride it out and hopefully--though they say it takes a day to recover for every time zone you cross--I'll be back in action in a few days. And at that point, I will offer you a MUCH more coherent blog post. Until then... Goodnight!