In these past few days of helplessness and despair I have once again clung to metaphors of light penetrating the dark and love spreading faster and farther than hate. I, like many others, cling to such metaphors to provide comfort in a world seemingly gone mad, mad on every hemisphere, on every continent, in many countries, in many cities, across cultures far and wide, both near and far.
As a once English teacher now forty something suburban dwelling library media specialist at a public high school, I don't know the first thing about how to once and for all defeat evil, terrorists, fundamentalism, nor ISIS in particular. I am not an expert on historical alliances, current treaties, global economics, EU refugee policies, European constitutional laws, Islam, radical Islam, racism, sexism, or civil rights. Nor do I expect are you. But what I do know and believe deeply is that Edmund Burke had it right when he declared "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good [people] to do nothing."
Our primary task starts with honoring the dead. It starts with the smallest acknowledgment, the simplest expressions of solidarity, the tiniest of olive branches extended to our nearest and dearest, and continues as we extend those gestures into larger actions, actions of hope. That hope dies when we criticize one another's impassioned responses to our own finite mortality and the search for a life fully lived, instead nitpicking at the approach or the attempt, instead of focusing and rallying around the intention.
So to those who have changed their Facebook profile picture to a French flag, I am sure if you had known more about Beirut's terrorist attack the day before, you now are thinking of them as well. The wave of red, white and blue I see awash on my news feed is a tangible way to express both outrage and support.
For now.
I recognize that for those who have visited France and Paris in particular, like me, the massacre speaks more directly to us but we are also not discounting other lives lost to terror in other lands, in other cultures. You and I stand with Beirut and every other location touched by the deaths of innocents.
Similarly, while the campus of UCONN is 45 miles up the road from me and I am no longer a student, I can condemn those who anonymously scrawled "Mahmoud killed Paris" on a dorm room welcome sign. I stand with those demanding UCONN students know and do better.
And even though I was never a student at Yale, nor the University of Missouri, I can empathize and feel the pain of those in your communities who feel discounted, threatened, and unsafe. I can stand with you to demand better. I can model how to be better.
Moreover, though I do not know what it feels like to be of color, I know that those who have championed #BlackLivesMatter are not simultaneously excluding any other lives. Of course, all lives matter, too. I can also stand with you.
In one week I will stand for Transgender Remembrance Day. This does not mean I also do not stand for any other lives lost or ruined in the fight for LGBTQ rights.
Honor the dead. Express your solidarity. Show compassion. Then take action. It is the only hope we have to preserve full lives of joy.
About Me
- KSchmidt Writes
- Writer, Library Media Specialist, flautist, member of the Twitterverse
Sunday, November 15, 2015
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Public Grieving
Growing up in my house meant yielding to a few taboos: no discussion of bodily functions, no prioritizing individual needs over the collective, and finally, no wallowing in sadness. Tears were to be held back, sadness to be pushed aside, and routine to be reestablished as soon as possible. I learned this so well that when I was teaching second grade and my grandfather passed away the day before Halloween, I went into work the next morning dressed as Red Riding Hood and carried on as normal with all the festivities including eating cupcakes and parading around the school grounds during which I had to smile and wave a la Princess Diana to all the parents watching.
Grieving, it would seem, was something to be put on hold, to be dealt with later, certainly not in public, and only within the privacy of one's own room. This may not be an uncommon lesson internalized from my generation's parents, many of whom bore up as deprived children during the Great Depression and World War II, those whose later young marriages and parenthoods were forged by the stoic blue blood protocol-following appropriate grieving of JFK's assassination by Jackie O.
When my friend had to cancel family plans this past Sunday to retrieve my cat Buddha's body from under my deck, he called to let his mother know that after a week of disappearance, we had in fact found Buddha dead, and would need to preserve his body for the night until we could get to a proper vet. As he hung up the phone she said, "Have fun." (Which, in a moment of great sorrow, actually made the two of us laugh out loud--a lot.) This was not unlike my own mother's response to my own phone call the next day. After a few seconds in which she allowed herself to cry, she pulled it together, rallied, and said, "So enough. You should go back to work." I had been grieving my 17 year old cat just 24 hours. He was still in my shed in a cooler.
While Buddha died in peace, he had been dead in the elements for a few days. I discovered him because of a swarm of flies hovering on my deck and because of an unmistakeable smell of death. How does one publicly grieve, especially when you have been taught to do so privately, especially when you live alone, especially when your pet has been through every major milestone in your adult life from age 30 onward with you, especially when the final details are unpleasant?
Buddha came into my life after I had lost my first cat, Tuna, tragically at six months old to a rare disease. Devastated, I swore I would never get another pet. One month later, a phone call from my brother changed everything. A cat had shown up or been dropped outside a full shelter, they had no room, he was living in a house with multiple dogs, cats, 80 chicks and ducklings just hatched (not joking), and was not doing well. He was maybe a year old. After travelling to MA and seeing him hiding in the back of a closet, I took him home to NY. One ferry and car ride later, he became my constant companion and confidant. We moved to CT shortly thereafter, from an apartment to a house six months after that.
I loved Buddha. I loved Buddha more deeply and for longer than I have loved most people. The longest we have ever been apart, until now, was for two weeks when I went to Australia in 2005. As when my father died, I have trouble imagining a world, a life without him. I see him everywhere because this was our house, our life together. I see him waiting on the front steps for me to arrive home from school. I see him standing at the sliding glass door meowing to come in. I see him looking adoringly at me, perched on my chest. I see him in the garden, curled under the elephant hosta, sleeping. He is every bit a part of me as my right arm, which he once bit when I was practicing my flute.
What I know is simply this. It will be some time, an undefined time, an elusive time, before I can fully enjoy my bed, my house, my gardens, my life once again. It will be some time before I don't feel so fragile as to expect to burst into tears when another person looks me in the eye or heaven help me, tries to hug me. It will be some time before I can even articulate what is enough, when is enough, how much is enough. But the time will come. I will continue to honor Buddha s best I can. I will try to honor myself by at long last, finally, and in a new way, publicly grieving.
Grieving, it would seem, was something to be put on hold, to be dealt with later, certainly not in public, and only within the privacy of one's own room. This may not be an uncommon lesson internalized from my generation's parents, many of whom bore up as deprived children during the Great Depression and World War II, those whose later young marriages and parenthoods were forged by the stoic blue blood protocol-following appropriate grieving of JFK's assassination by Jackie O.
When my friend had to cancel family plans this past Sunday to retrieve my cat Buddha's body from under my deck, he called to let his mother know that after a week of disappearance, we had in fact found Buddha dead, and would need to preserve his body for the night until we could get to a proper vet. As he hung up the phone she said, "Have fun." (Which, in a moment of great sorrow, actually made the two of us laugh out loud--a lot.) This was not unlike my own mother's response to my own phone call the next day. After a few seconds in which she allowed herself to cry, she pulled it together, rallied, and said, "So enough. You should go back to work." I had been grieving my 17 year old cat just 24 hours. He was still in my shed in a cooler.
While Buddha died in peace, he had been dead in the elements for a few days. I discovered him because of a swarm of flies hovering on my deck and because of an unmistakeable smell of death. How does one publicly grieve, especially when you have been taught to do so privately, especially when you live alone, especially when your pet has been through every major milestone in your adult life from age 30 onward with you, especially when the final details are unpleasant?
Buddha came into my life after I had lost my first cat, Tuna, tragically at six months old to a rare disease. Devastated, I swore I would never get another pet. One month later, a phone call from my brother changed everything. A cat had shown up or been dropped outside a full shelter, they had no room, he was living in a house with multiple dogs, cats, 80 chicks and ducklings just hatched (not joking), and was not doing well. He was maybe a year old. After travelling to MA and seeing him hiding in the back of a closet, I took him home to NY. One ferry and car ride later, he became my constant companion and confidant. We moved to CT shortly thereafter, from an apartment to a house six months after that.
I loved Buddha. I loved Buddha more deeply and for longer than I have loved most people. The longest we have ever been apart, until now, was for two weeks when I went to Australia in 2005. As when my father died, I have trouble imagining a world, a life without him. I see him everywhere because this was our house, our life together. I see him waiting on the front steps for me to arrive home from school. I see him standing at the sliding glass door meowing to come in. I see him looking adoringly at me, perched on my chest. I see him in the garden, curled under the elephant hosta, sleeping. He is every bit a part of me as my right arm, which he once bit when I was practicing my flute.
What I know is simply this. It will be some time, an undefined time, an elusive time, before I can fully enjoy my bed, my house, my gardens, my life once again. It will be some time before I don't feel so fragile as to expect to burst into tears when another person looks me in the eye or heaven help me, tries to hug me. It will be some time before I can even articulate what is enough, when is enough, how much is enough. But the time will come. I will continue to honor Buddha s best I can. I will try to honor myself by at long last, finally, and in a new way, publicly grieving.
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Ten Birthdays Later
"There is no right way to grieve, and you have to let people grieve in the way that they can. One of the things that happens to everyone who is grief-stricken, who has lost someone, is there comes a time when everyone else just wants you to get over it, but of course you don't get over it. You get stronger; you try and live on; you endure; you change; but you don't get over it. You carry it with you."
My dad would have turned 84 today. My mom, my brother and I all agree he would hate that number. He wanted no part of senior citizenship, his behavior far more childlike in its wonder and enthusiasm. A Depression baby whose parents divorced leading to his older brother living with his father and he with his maternal grandmother, he was materially poor but spiritually rich, and forever making up for the lost opportunities of his childhood. He made sure my brother and I got to experience everything he did and much of what he didn't. Then, he did so right along with us.
He became a father in his late thirties, learned to ski at 40, began playing the organ by number and color around the same time. When I was young he awoke us on a Saturday morning to the sounds of Broadway, John Denver or marching bands blasted throughout the house as loud as could be. Sometimes he played reveille on the trumpet he used during his service in the Korean War. He entertained us with his banjo or by bursting into a spontaneous lindy or jitter bug with my mother. He was always sketching with pastels and charcoals, favoring lighthouse and sea scenes.
He water skied with his glasses on and nicknamed me "Mouth" until I hit junior high when it changed to "Smart Ass". He even bought me a white T-shirt with a rainbowed Smart Ass emblazoned front and center. I haven't been called Smart Ass in a long time and I miss it. In every letter I received at Smith College, he enclosed one dollar. When I bought my house in Mystic, we did it and the painting together. Now I can't bear to think of moving because much of the design and many of my plants are cuttings from his. He is my living landscape.
It's been ten years since my dad died, exactly one month before his 74th birthday. So bereft was I, I could not even phone friends to tell them. To utter the words "My dad died" aloud was a permanence I could not cement. Not for a very long time.
And since my dad died, there are times when I feel so incredibly alone. In our family unit, I feel most like him: witty, silly, artistic, and kind. It's hard to fly solo. I have eaten my way through my grief, I have worked my way through my grief, I have isolated my way through my grief. It still hits me when I least expect it or on a day like today when I do. I still can't conceive of a world without my dad in it but here we are, ten years later, in that world. He would be angry if I wallowed, so full of life even up to the end, "I had a good life, a great life, and a far longer life than I expected. Make me proud."
I have, Dad. I have.
Happy Birthday.
Monday, February 17, 2014
Macabre
Some time ago, despite hesitation, I continued on my way through Patricia Cornwell's recently diminishing Kay Scarpetta forensic series. The emphasis on science softened the graphic crime scenes and subsequent autopsy details, effectively keeping the wounds intellectualized through the written word. I justified my repeated witnessing of such violence with my accompanied scientific gains. As my natural affinity for written mystery evolved toward thriller, so did an unanticipated interest in literary portrayals of psychopathy including the point of view of the profoundly disturbed. I joined Steig Larsson's Lisbeth Salander in her single minded quest to seek a gruesome revenge of equal depravity. Then I discovered Jo Nesbo's stolid recovering alcoholic detective Harry Hole. With Nesbo, each murder is more frighteningly described than the next and frankly, creeps me out quite effectively, enough so that I have to read Nesbo only in the daylight. (This also happens when I view The Walking Dead). I have spent an enormous amount of time reading authors who specialize in the myriad ways to kill human beings: Karin Fossum, Chelsea Cain, Lars Kepler, Linda Fairstein, Tess Gerritsen, to name just a few more.
Recently a few literary explorations of human depravity also caught my attention, including Koch's fictional family case study The Dinner, Gillian Flynn's operatic twisted relationship study Gone Girl and the dysfunctional family memoir We Are Animals. My fascination with psychology justified these choices. Enter the slow TV movement with the freakish American Horror Story: Asylum, the prequel to the movie Psycho, Bates Motel, and now Hannibal, loosely based on the novel Red Dragon. I can't seem to look away despite having been moved in the past by horror and gore to fear, nightmares, and depression. Something about the macabre draws me in. My latest foray is HBO's True Detective series, an astonishing exploration of the human psyche on the individual level which quickly expands to the universal. It asks what went wrong with a humanity capable of such indifference to one another.
After a two week binge on Criminal Minds reruns and a pretty consistent gross out from American Horror Story: Coven, I began to cut back. Feeling cranky and depressed, I also felt that as a woman I had a big target on my back screaming out "Prey" for all psychopaths to see. I wonder how much my and so many others' readings, watchings of these TV shows, and fascinations with movies of the like function as collusion with the master criminals. By consuming such dark tales with great ferocity, are we ourselves contributing to their own feeding off of the macabre, virtual or otherwise?
I still plan to watch Hannibal season 2 in a few weeks time. I am also in for the last three episodes of True Detective. I need to know what message we are supposed to be decoding. Despite given what I've just recounted. I remain endlessly fascinated by the human mind and its anticipation, sense of suspense, thrill, and yes, horror, particular emotional. Maybe the creatives count on us to be there, to witness their macabre purge of such dark desires. Maybe such witnessing holds some potential inflictors at bay. Maybe indifference to the macabre is in itself, macabre.
Recently a few literary explorations of human depravity also caught my attention, including Koch's fictional family case study The Dinner, Gillian Flynn's operatic twisted relationship study Gone Girl and the dysfunctional family memoir We Are Animals. My fascination with psychology justified these choices. Enter the slow TV movement with the freakish American Horror Story: Asylum, the prequel to the movie Psycho, Bates Motel, and now Hannibal, loosely based on the novel Red Dragon. I can't seem to look away despite having been moved in the past by horror and gore to fear, nightmares, and depression. Something about the macabre draws me in. My latest foray is HBO's True Detective series, an astonishing exploration of the human psyche on the individual level which quickly expands to the universal. It asks what went wrong with a humanity capable of such indifference to one another.
After a two week binge on Criminal Minds reruns and a pretty consistent gross out from American Horror Story: Coven, I began to cut back. Feeling cranky and depressed, I also felt that as a woman I had a big target on my back screaming out "Prey" for all psychopaths to see. I wonder how much my and so many others' readings, watchings of these TV shows, and fascinations with movies of the like function as collusion with the master criminals. By consuming such dark tales with great ferocity, are we ourselves contributing to their own feeding off of the macabre, virtual or otherwise?
I still plan to watch Hannibal season 2 in a few weeks time. I am also in for the last three episodes of True Detective. I need to know what message we are supposed to be decoding. Despite given what I've just recounted. I remain endlessly fascinated by the human mind and its anticipation, sense of suspense, thrill, and yes, horror, particular emotional. Maybe the creatives count on us to be there, to witness their macabre purge of such dark desires. Maybe such witnessing holds some potential inflictors at bay. Maybe indifference to the macabre is in itself, macabre.
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Regret
I don't want to be one of those people lying on her deathbed running through the litany of regrets. But to be honest, at this point in my life I already have such a list and I run through it upon occasion. Today is one such occasion.
I heard from an old friend who really should have been a better friend in the sense that over the years, we should have spent more time together and known each other better. Circumstances being what they were that didn't happen, and it makes me consider the other people who would have been worth knowing and worth knowing better who have entered and exited my life fleetingly. Conversely, there are people for whom I am that fleeting apparition. And I regret what we missed. How can I not?
I have much to offer a colleague, a student, a friend or a lover. Kind, compassionate, smart, but flawed like all of us, I can offer my time, my attention, my care, my love, as can they. Anyone worth his or her salt has figured out that it is connection to others, whether platonic or romantic, global or local, human or other, which matters most during our existence on earth. It is everything else in fact, that is fleeting. But sometimes we spend our lives focused on the wrong things and the wrong people. Our laser locks just slightly off center and we give a whole lot of energy and attention to not quite the right thing.
I blew a large bulk of my attention on a person who didn't warrant it. At first, I didn't know it but later, later there were signs and I should have redirected that care a lot earlier than I did. Because I didn't, I missed out. Because I got hurt, I continued to miss out. Because I then closed off, I missed out even more.
Sometimes it takes an old friend to remind us of who we were before the regrets began to pile up. To remind us of what it was like to be in the moment, young and enthusiastic, unguarded and a little naïve. To remind us that we don't want to be lying on the deathbed regretting.
I heard from an old friend who really should have been a better friend in the sense that over the years, we should have spent more time together and known each other better. Circumstances being what they were that didn't happen, and it makes me consider the other people who would have been worth knowing and worth knowing better who have entered and exited my life fleetingly. Conversely, there are people for whom I am that fleeting apparition. And I regret what we missed. How can I not?
I have much to offer a colleague, a student, a friend or a lover. Kind, compassionate, smart, but flawed like all of us, I can offer my time, my attention, my care, my love, as can they. Anyone worth his or her salt has figured out that it is connection to others, whether platonic or romantic, global or local, human or other, which matters most during our existence on earth. It is everything else in fact, that is fleeting. But sometimes we spend our lives focused on the wrong things and the wrong people. Our laser locks just slightly off center and we give a whole lot of energy and attention to not quite the right thing.
I blew a large bulk of my attention on a person who didn't warrant it. At first, I didn't know it but later, later there were signs and I should have redirected that care a lot earlier than I did. Because I didn't, I missed out. Because I got hurt, I continued to miss out. Because I then closed off, I missed out even more.
Sometimes it takes an old friend to remind us of who we were before the regrets began to pile up. To remind us of what it was like to be in the moment, young and enthusiastic, unguarded and a little naïve. To remind us that we don't want to be lying on the deathbed regretting.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time
We had a snow day today, again. I did not go to work, again. I did not get dressed, again.
Welcome to Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time. I spend my snow days reading, on the computer, snuggling with the cats, watching TV or Netflix, and napping, each of which can be expertly executed while in pajamas, especially the napping.
The pajama pants I favor are a drawstringed soft, fleecy purple with white polka dots. They match almost nothing I own except for the lavender fleecy top they came with, which I rarely wear. I choose instead random T-shirts and a navy blue zip-up hoodie. I bottom off with black fur-lined fleecy booties to complete this Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time fashion moment.
Because of the number of snow days this year, and the plethora of frigid temperature days, I have taken to replicating Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time on days other than snow days. When I do work, it seems that the moment I return home I greet each cat by name giving each one a solid, then walk directly to wherever I last left my pajama pants. There I transform, venturing back into Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time Zen mode and there I remain until it is time for bed. There is an entire wardrobe going to waste but I don't envision a change soon.
If the forecast manifests as described, and school is cancelled tomorrow followed by another storm Saturday, I could manage an epic (or epidemic?) run of Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time lasting five days. I'm ready.
Welcome to Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time. I spend my snow days reading, on the computer, snuggling with the cats, watching TV or Netflix, and napping, each of which can be expertly executed while in pajamas, especially the napping.
The pajama pants I favor are a drawstringed soft, fleecy purple with white polka dots. They match almost nothing I own except for the lavender fleecy top they came with, which I rarely wear. I choose instead random T-shirts and a navy blue zip-up hoodie. I bottom off with black fur-lined fleecy booties to complete this Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time fashion moment.
Because of the number of snow days this year, and the plethora of frigid temperature days, I have taken to replicating Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time on days other than snow days. When I do work, it seems that the moment I return home I greet each cat by name giving each one a solid, then walk directly to wherever I last left my pajama pants. There I transform, venturing back into Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time Zen mode and there I remain until it is time for bed. There is an entire wardrobe going to waste but I don't envision a change soon.
If the forecast manifests as described, and school is cancelled tomorrow followed by another storm Saturday, I could manage an epic (or epidemic?) run of Inordinate Pajama Wearing Time lasting five days. I'm ready.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Conflicted
Well campers, I'm conflicted. On this, the holiest of holy sports days, the one in which it is all about teamwork and talent and will, stories of underdogs and loyalty and heart, I'm about to lay one big Debbie Downer on you regarding that oh so ultra American past time, football. In particular, the Superbowl. In the process I'm sure I'll be accused by some of being in simplest form, antisocial or "a hater," on up to the more complex unpatriotic, traitor, or gasp! socialist, in effect preemptively ruining any chance of my ever running for office successfully given this blog's existence. I can live with that because who could effectively argue that the Superbowl is anything but one big win for all?
Hooray for our winning economy with roughly 5 billion dollars generated by this spectacle and its collateral. I'm sure a big bunch of that dough is going right back into yours and my neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and small business pockets and not instead to some tax free corporate entity and its CEOs. I'm definitely sure none of it is going to the $745 million dollar fund (that a federal judge rejected for being too small a figure) for former NFL players suffering from health injuries related to their careers. Speaking of which, even Brett Favre is now reporting such post career memory loss. (If he starts to claim it regarding his sexted weiner, I'm calling bullshit.) And I can almost guarantee none of that 5 billion is going toward the baseline salaries and earned benefits of some of our most important and vital community workers: physicians and nurses, police and firefighters, teachers and child care workers.
So it must be going to something worthy then, right? Like maybe a study of what concussions do to even the youngest of players, those in middle and high schools? And/or injury prevention programs which you know, might cause us to question even allowing young adults to play the sport when all scientific evidence reveals that the frontal lobe of the brain, the one most important for organization, decision making, and impulse control, hasn't fully finished forming until around age 25. But that would mean we would also have to call into question college play, scholarships and television and advertising contracts based on such play, alumni contributions and university donations and even players who can't read and write beyond an elementary level. Poof! There goes your 5 billion. Clearly it's not economically worth it, so hooray Superbowl for making us forget all that.
Hooray also for the 90,000 hot dogs consumed at the stadium during the game. If everyone of those fans also signed a whitehouse.gov petition, we could make massive changes in education, poverty and gun control. Did you know that in the first 14 school days of 2014, there were at least seven school shootings, an average of one every other week? There were 28 in all of 2013. It's only been four weeks but we're one quarter of the way there already! I know it's hard to mobilize that many people over one looming issue. Look how hard it was to mobilize them over something far less important, one nineteen year old celebrity behaving badly who threw eggs at his neighbor's house, drag raced in Miami while high, and assaulted his limo driver? What? One day you say? One day to get 100,000 signatures? Oh.
Well then hooray for the super entertaining and clever commercials we all love and laugh at, except for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, and Cialis. And hooray for politicians who support insurance companies covering four hour erections for men but think twice about covering the possible prevention of a pregnancy triggered by one of those monumental four hour stints.
And hooray for the super entertaining and clever half time shows we all love, excerpt for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, Cialis, and objectified women.
Conflicted? Don't be. Yay, rah. Gorge on the 90 million chicken wings. Don't think twice about the 45 million wingless chickens left behind. Enjoy. It's all a distraction designed specifically for you.
Hooray for our winning economy with roughly 5 billion dollars generated by this spectacle and its collateral. I'm sure a big bunch of that dough is going right back into yours and my neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and small business pockets and not instead to some tax free corporate entity and its CEOs. I'm definitely sure none of it is going to the $745 million dollar fund (that a federal judge rejected for being too small a figure) for former NFL players suffering from health injuries related to their careers. Speaking of which, even Brett Favre is now reporting such post career memory loss. (If he starts to claim it regarding his sexted weiner, I'm calling bullshit.) And I can almost guarantee none of that 5 billion is going toward the baseline salaries and earned benefits of some of our most important and vital community workers: physicians and nurses, police and firefighters, teachers and child care workers.
So it must be going to something worthy then, right? Like maybe a study of what concussions do to even the youngest of players, those in middle and high schools? And/or injury prevention programs which you know, might cause us to question even allowing young adults to play the sport when all scientific evidence reveals that the frontal lobe of the brain, the one most important for organization, decision making, and impulse control, hasn't fully finished forming until around age 25. But that would mean we would also have to call into question college play, scholarships and television and advertising contracts based on such play, alumni contributions and university donations and even players who can't read and write beyond an elementary level. Poof! There goes your 5 billion. Clearly it's not economically worth it, so hooray Superbowl for making us forget all that.
Hooray also for the 90,000 hot dogs consumed at the stadium during the game. If everyone of those fans also signed a whitehouse.gov petition, we could make massive changes in education, poverty and gun control. Did you know that in the first 14 school days of 2014, there were at least seven school shootings, an average of one every other week? There were 28 in all of 2013. It's only been four weeks but we're one quarter of the way there already! I know it's hard to mobilize that many people over one looming issue. Look how hard it was to mobilize them over something far less important, one nineteen year old celebrity behaving badly who threw eggs at his neighbor's house, drag raced in Miami while high, and assaulted his limo driver? What? One day you say? One day to get 100,000 signatures? Oh.
Well then hooray for the super entertaining and clever commercials we all love and laugh at, except for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, and Cialis. And hooray for politicians who support insurance companies covering four hour erections for men but think twice about covering the possible prevention of a pregnancy triggered by one of those monumental four hour stints.
And hooray for the super entertaining and clever half time shows we all love, excerpt for the sexist ones objectifying women and the ones that reduce men to animals who only respond to beer, cars, Cialis, and objectified women.
Conflicted? Don't be. Yay, rah. Gorge on the 90 million chicken wings. Don't think twice about the 45 million wingless chickens left behind. Enjoy. It's all a distraction designed specifically for you.
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