Steel Roses and Nightmares

Yesterday, a young black man was apprehended at a BART station. Honestly, in the upshot of things, why makes no nevermind. Its Rodney King all over again, white officer, black captive. During the course of trying to control him and his friend, the white officer shot the young black man dead.

The news reported that young man was shot in the back while handcuffed.

Tonight I watched as the news agency apologized, saying that, on closer inspection, the handcuffed man was the young black man's friend, who had been kneeling beside him. At the time of the shooting, the young man himself was free.

Little help that is now.

The officer who shot him resigned. There are riots in the streets. Businesses with no affiliation to the shootings are having windows smashed in. Cars are being beaten into unrecognizable heaps. Dumpsters are being set of fire. Police are fighting not just for order, but in some cases their very lives.

In the meantime, with shamefaced grace, the news talks about the shooting victim, but instead of their usual mug shot, they are showing a veritable slideshow of action shots of the young man. Him at a party, laughing and holding a plate. Him smiling and looking amazing clean cut and well adjusted. Him in all sorts of innocuous poses. Not to mention the coverage of his funeral.

Its as if, while overtly apologizing, they are actually trying to sneakily incite more anger, trying to keep the riots going. Are they really sorry? Or does this make good ratings?

Now I don't know what the young man did, if anything. I do know if he did do anything, it will be downplayed and whitewashed, and his color will mean more than his actions before this is all through.

I don't know what possessed the Bart officer to do something so wildly stupid and--with as many other officers were assisting him--completely unnecessary.  I do know that its slowly coming to light that the Bart officer has a checkered past, and possibly shouldn't have been working the job he was.

And when all of this has passed, what will happen to all the news programs just like this one who mis-reported the facts and lit this powder keg?

A big fat honkin' nothing.

Riots in the streets. Homes, cars, and businesses destroyed. Massive amounts of injuries--major and minor--on all sides. Expenses to the city, the taxpayers, and to tons of poor families, none of whom really have extra to give.  And months for racial tensions to die down again.

And there they sit, oh so sorry, untouchable and untouched by the violence they helped create.

My self esteem, as we all know, is far from sterling. Having added a good 40 extra pounds of baggage to my already somewhat chubby figure hasn't helped matters any. I have back folds. I don't fit into my fat jeans. Its a sad sad thing.

And, of course, I'm one of those women who always has it all go to her waist, giving me a butt the size of the Grand Canyon.

However, of the list of things I could easily share of all the things I hate about my look (thin hair, red face, scars on my teats, etc, etc, etc) the one thing I have a hard time feeling self conscious about is the junk in my trunk. Every time I catch sight of it in a mirror, I find myself smiling anew, because what rolls through my head is this:

"I like big butts and I can not lie.
You other brothers can't deny
When a girl walk in with an itty-bitty waist and a round thing in your face
You get sprung..."

God bless Sir Mix-A-Lot.

My bus was almost hit by a car this morning.

We come near the Lake Merritt Bart station, and we see...nothing but firetrucks. The area is plastered with them. Its 6am, not another noise in the city, not a soul stirring, but here there is a gathering of fireman the likes of which I've never seen. Its like they emptied out several departments. No sirens are on, no lights flashing, and all the trucks are politely parked on the side of the road.

The firemen are less polite. There is a huge body of them, all in a circle, and the circle they have created is blocking both lanes of traffic. There's no way to ease past them without risking hitting one of them, and not a single one looks up to give us the go ahead or thinks to clear out. They are much too engrossed in each other.

Their business could be official, but if so, why does it look so informal? And what could possibly be going on anyway, that requires so many idle firemen? For that matter, why would firemen choose to idle at a Bart (subway) station in the first place?

After waiting two full turns of the stoplight while trying to figure out what to do, the bus driver finally takes a right down a one way street. Two blocks later there is a left, and then we just have to hit another one way street that gets up back to the bus route again. So, I'll grant the owner of that fancy black car, they might not have been used to seeing a bus on their road. And we had definitely lost time trying to figure out what to do, so it is real possible the bus driver whizzed through a light just on the cusp of red.

But really, buses are big, like traveling walls. And the road was a merging vee, with only one lane going either direction, so i don't know this driver thought he was going, or how he could have missed us. I watched with a sort of morbid fascination as the car refused to slow down, even when it became obscenely apparent that he was going to make it to the intersection just as we did. Sure enough, at the last possible second, just as he was about to slam into the rear wheel of the bus, I hear:

SCREEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Good thing his brakes work.

It was funny. All the other passengers and even the driver were so busy talking about the weirdness with the firemen that they didn't even notice. My morning was almost very exciting.

So in the wee tiny hours of the morning, I haul my carcass outside and tramp the distance to the bus stop, barely able to keep my eyes open. Once there, I sink gratefully to the edge of the curb (no bench), pull out a book, and start to read. The bus comes and I drag myself in, gratefully claiming the nearest empty seat. All I want is to crawl back into bed and tell work to go to H-E-double hockey sticks.

My first inkling that my morning has begun not quite right is an ant crawling up my arm. I brush it away. A few minutes later, another appears. I smoosh it. Repeat this process with increasing frequency until my sleep addled brain goes: "Hey, wait a minute."

I look down and find my messenger bag absolutely coated in ants. It looks like I picked up a small anthill. I start wildly beating all the ants off the bag, then realize the sweater I'm wearing is similarly covered. Which makes me covered.

Therein ensues a happy little ant dance performed by me, while the other inhabitants of the bus look on as if I'm ready to start either speaking in tongues or hold the bus hostage at any moment. Finally I see no more ants crawling out of the pockets of the messenger bag while the sweater and me seem fairly vermin free. I sit back down, stoically pretending I wasn't just whirling in circles like some sort of meth-addled dervish and beating on myself.

Then I get to work. I sit down to business as usual, until, on an especially long and tedious call, I feel it. Movement against my thigh. Worse, my inner thigh.

I shift. More movement.
Oh sh!t; I have ants in my pants.

Shift.
Crawl
Shift. Slap.
Crawl
Shift. Slap. Press. Pinch. Shift.
Crawl

Now the people in the cubicles next to me are looking like I'm possessed, and the call is never ending. I tone it down.

Shift. Press. Attempt to smoosh through jean fabric.
Crawl

....its gonna be a looooong day.

In other news, if my furry little boy cat doesn't stop prancing aimlessly back and forth and yowling at my feet just because he's bored I'm going to set his fuzzy little tail on fire. That'll give him something to do.

I moved into my place with two rose bushes. One is a pretty little thing called the ( Collapse )

and the other is the ( Collapse )

When they came in the apartment they were in rough shape. They'd weathered leaf rot, aphids, and all sorts of terrors plants like them are not fond of. Then they were relocated miles across the Bay area, from outdoors to indoors, and--considering this place is what it is--into another climate. Think of El Cerrito as the sort of climate you'd find in the North Carolina mountains, only, if possible, wetter. Now imagine Oakland as Atlanta, Georgia on a moderate to blazingly hot day.

Angel was so shook up she actually dropped all her leaves in protest. There was one lone branch left, the only hint my bush was still alive.

There is only one place in the room that gets full sun every day...the kitchen. According to the care instructions that is not enough sunlight. According my my ex-roomie who is really good with plants, they need special rose fertilizer, repotted in larger pots, and other odds and ends to really thrive. And I didn't have two pennies to rub together. I didn't go to the local market, much less to a gardening store. So I put them in the kitchen, watered them every time the soil felt dry, and hoped for the best.

Well, whatever I'm doing, they love it. The sun, especially, the light here is their best friend. I don't know what the difference between here and El Cerrito is, but apparently its huge. Angel burst out in a ton of new growth and now has no less than seven new buds.

And Evelyn? Evelyn is blooming.

Squee!

Go and read this right now:

Wikihistory

"Anyone want to go back and stop Asian Avenger from negating his own existence? Anyone?"

*dies laughing*

"Only you could confuse a toilet!"

Please be aware, my account got removed from the fictionpress archives. I have nothing bad to say about the site, and in fact I was very happy there. However, considering the subject matter I write about, it was probably only a matter of time before someone freaked out. No big deal.

Due to requests and needing a place to host my work, I have made a new home for it, a personal home where no one can take it down. It can be found here:

http://betagrimm.blogspot.com/

The plus to this is that it is private, exclusive only to people who enjoy the work, and cannot be cached by search engines. The latter is a bonus to me, because it means if I want to sell my work later on I can. All you would-be writers, please keep in mind the moment a search engine gets a hold of a story it could be considered "self-published," and as such be unable to be published again through a professional company.

The other plus is that I'm planning on putting more on the blog. That would be edits and improvements to Portacura as well as posting other stories I am in progress of writing. So...more goodies all around.

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So...that's it. Again, open to suggestions if you can think of any easier way to do this. Sorry about vanishing so abruptly, I didn't meant to, and I couldn't even post an explanation as to why. That's my only complaint--I wish I could have.

And thanks to everyone who read. You have no idea how much your support kept me motivated and positive about the story, or how many days I re-read your compliments. Even if you choose no longer to be a reader, I thank you for the time you did give me. :)

Is anybody else on Facebook?

Just curious.