“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” ~Edmund Burke
My bank account, the weather and my car causing me to lose my will to live each and everyday have finally converged into a perfect storm thus empowering me to finally go test driving. I’ve yet to tell you the story of the last time I went test driving but that’s because it involves a car salesman stalking me and two friends from one dealership to another and the subsequent phone calls because he wanted to date my friend Pam. There were tears involved and awkward storytelling and now I can’t look at a Honda without my right eye twitching.
It’s always been my plan to get a vanity plate for my new car. There’s no reason except that if writing daily about my life isn’t narcissitic enough, I figured I’d top it off with a license plate that says “ILUVME” or “DONTH8″ or “HOWULIKMENOW”. Clearly still working on it but suggestions are welcome. Anyway, this reminded me of a drive I was taking on the souther tier of the state between Elmira and Corning. Western NY isn’t really known for being a cosmopolitan place or a hotbed of diversity. Hell, I can honestly say that I could count on ONE hand the number of people of black people I saw while there. So I’m driving along one afternoon and I see a beat up truck with a vanity plate that reads…wait for it:
SLUMLRD4
And then I rearended the Hyundai in front of me. But why would one broadcast being a ‘slum lord’ which – and correct me if I’m wrong – is illegal in most locales. It’d be like “CRKWHORE” being on your license plate. Might be true but do you really want people knowing that you are a “SHITHD”? I think not.
The next day, I saw another good one – that I cannot remember now, of course – on a pick up from North Carolina with the world’s largest Confederate flag and a white trash sticker. It’s such a shame that “ASSHOLESEVRYWHRE” is far too long.







Verbal diarrhea
“Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment.” ~Ira Gassen
Usually I’m very meticulous about the stories I tell you all because they are all a manifestation of something I’ve been thinking long and hard about for days. Sadly with NaBloPoMo you’re getting a heap load of verbal diarrhea: Exactly what I’m thinking as I think it. It’s my brain in real time. Discussion of vanity plates and how my brothers leave me out of everything are exactly what’s going through my head. Not about the economy or the world’s most heinous project but vanity plates and high pitched whining.
Currently* I want to go off on a room full of educated white women discussing how black people think. It’s a discussion of race and gay marriage. And oh, oh, the burning. It hurts to hear a group of people discuss race and to want to just throw yourself into that conversation but you cannot because you’re so livid by the overall tone and accusations that have come up since the election day debacle that you cannot bring yourself to insert yourself without your head doing a 360 degree turn at the absurdity of it all. Instead I fumed and spouted off and stomped outside to be alone with my ever sober self then came back in to drown my sorrows in chèvre. And to do as my mother said; which is to blog about it and use incessant run-on sentences and possible non-sequiturs to say: Oh my hell, I’m pissed.
*This was last night. I’m fine now. Carry on.