Godammit, I’m Mad!

When I told [a family member] that 26 kids from Sandy Hook elementary school were going to sing at the Super Bowl, he was surprised and disgusted. I asked rhetorically why the survivors from the Aurora movie theater hadn’t been invited. He answered, “Because they’re not cute, and it would be harder to exploit a large group of them.”

He really gets it. Why don’t all Americans get it?

I’m tired of Sandy Hook grief porn. I don’t want to wait around for the Sandy Hook lego set and the Sandy Hook Happy Meal.  I have always been in favor of gun regulations and I’ve signed a million petitions urging legislators to stand up to the NRA. I didn’t allow my kids to have toy guns and and I have no regrets about it.

I wish that people could think about gun crime in America without needing to invoke a specific incident that then eclipses the real every dayness of homicide and suicide death by guns. You could fill the Super Dome with the people killed by guns in Chicago alone.

There were an average of 85 gun deaths each day in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including two accidents, 53 suicides and 30 homicides.

If Americans needed a good cry before the Super Bowl, they should have been forced to look at some paralyzed veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe the lights went out during the game because god is disgusted, too.

While I’m at it, I’d like to thank our media for showing us only that one photoshopped picture of Adam Lanza with the huge chin and the bugged-out eyes, instead of the one above that depicts a regular human boy with bad skin and a sad little smile.

Aside from life and death, hair is all that matters. A really bad hair situation will trump  everything else, and I mean everything.

Fucked up hair is excruciating. The pain is relentless. The knowledge that it’s your own fault makes it a source of  bitter self-loathing. “Why did I do this? Why wasn’t I satisfied with the hair I had?” Every encounter with a mirror is a fresh horror.

If both my legs were broken, I would still be wailing about my hair. If I had thirty seconds to live, I would scream, “But my hair looks awful!”

Fiscal cliffs, gun nuts, my dog’s toothache, our fine young men and women in Afghanistan, none of it matters like my bad hair. It was once long and luxurious and black, even though it was frizzy and brittle. Now I look like a Real Housewife from Somewhere.

If character is destiny, I’m a complete cunt. But I can’t go on like this. Tomorrow I’m going to try to change it back, or at least restore its brunetteness.

If you hate me, this should be a great moment for you. Enjoy! If you love me, then pray to the god of your understanding that my hair turns out okay.

Watching the news tonight, I am struck by the word “evil” in reference to the shootings in Connecticut.

A disturbed 20 year old young man who lives with his mother, has no friends, hasn’t spoken to his older brother for two years and is remembered only for his nervousness and inability to fit in….that is not evil. I see no possible evil in this tormented soul.

A mother who hoards firearms and leaves them around her house, now that might be evil, since no one could be so astoundingly careless and stupid.

I am dreading the revelations to come.

When I was little, I loved mermaids. I loved the illustrations in my book of Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales. I drew pictures of mermaids over and over, draping them in strings of pearls.

Now that I’m addicted to tumblr, I’ve discovered that mermaids are more popular than almost any other image. A mermaid also encompasses two hugely popular tumblr subjects: Tits, and women submerged in water. While tits need no explanation, the drowning women are disturbing.   Paintings of Ophelia tend to be lovely and melancholy, but depictions of modern women floating under water or laying dead in bathtubs are reminders that people like to see women in  jeopardy (if not actually dead.)

Mermaids are always beautiful and young, so that aspect of their attraction is obvious. In mythology and folklore, Mermaids are sirens who lure sailors to their death.   Do men find this danger seductive?

More important, mermaids have no genitals. Do men love them because of this or in spite of it? Does it relieve them of performance anxiety? I’m convinced that the anatomy issue is key somehow.

For me as a child, The Little Mermaid was a beautiful fantasy of a daughter who was loved by her family and showered with jewels.   I didn’t really understand why she would leave her home. I wanted a home filled with love and warmth. I didn’t feel good about her deal with the sea witch. The prince seemed kind of dimwitted not to recognize her or to intuit her love for him.

Later on, I remember reading The Little Mermaid to little Max, at bedtime. The book I read to him was an old unabridged translation of the original Hans Christian Anderson stories. It probably took several nights to get to the end, and I was so engrossed in the story that I forgot what was coming. I choked up with tears and tried to think of a way to spare Max the tragic last paragraph: The Little Mermaid threw herself overboard and turned into seafoam, comforted by some angelic sprites who asked her to join them. I think I made something up but I can’t ask Max.

Why do we love a story where the heroine sacrifices everything for love, even suffering constant  excruciating  pain, and ends up getting nothing but death? Until Disney changed the ending and turned a classic tragedy into a sappy feel-good product to sell other products, it was, for me, an inexplicably melancholy story.   It punishes a girl who seeks adventure and romance, so what else makes it such an enduring favorite?

Theories, memories, insults, anyone?

Isn’t is weird to see people going on about their business while a disaster devastates  one part of the world and a ruthless massacre takes place somewhere else? If you follow twitter, the incongruous tweets illustrate how most people go right on advancing their agendas and talking about what they’re wearing or what they ate, NO MATTER WHAT.

I know that humans are wired like this, wired for adaptation to nearly any  circumstances. Instead of celebrating this feature of humanity, I’ve always found it incredibly sad. People survive wars, torture, earthquakes,  amputations, every kind of loss. They learn to  absorb  these tragedies and and for the most past, we expect them to return to “normal.”

Even if we can’t go to Japan to help out, should we shrug it off and go right back to slobbering over shoes or worrying about our Klout scores?

I feel guilty, sad, angry, confused, and conflicted.

In my own life, I can’t move on and get back to business. It feels like a sin to even consider it.  Resilience  seems like a cruel joke.   But that’s what  survival is about.

I wish resilience for the  people of  of Japan, but less resilience for the people of twitter and elsewhere, who haven’t even missed a beat in the rhythm of their daily bullshit.

Thoughts or  advice?