If I Were President

I'm probably the most apolitical person on the face of the U.S. Fact is, I don't much care who is President. One candidate is just about as bad as the other. I have two requirements for a "good" President:

a) (S)he prevents my home from being bombed, by adversaries either foreign or domestic.
b) (S)he keeps the monetary/banking system in this country stable. Long live the FDIC and the NYSE.

Other than that, I figure they will allow crappy laws to be made that benefit someone other than me. That's always been the case, I don't see it changing in my lifetime. Campaign promises seem to be quickly forgotten as soon as the newly elected sets foot in the Oval Office.

However, if I were running for President, this would be my platform.

1) Legalize abortion in all states for all ages upon request without any b.s. prerequisites aimed to coerce a woman out of said abortion. I don't think the gubmint should be mucking around in anyone's uterus for any reason. I think the decision to have an abortion should be the woman's alone after a consultation with a qualified physician. Nobody gets to dictate their morality on another person, especially not on another person's uterus. PERIOD.

2) Legalize marijuana; all amounts, either for sale or personal use. In fact, the vegatative matter should be inspected by the USDA and taxed and regulated like liquor and tobacco. One plus: anyone driving under the influence of marijuana would be going too slow to inflict injury on either persons or property. One drawback to legalization would be a nationwide munchies crisis and we already have a problem with obesity. Maybe we should just outlaw Twinkies and Doritos.

3) Legalize prostitution. This is just common sense. Quit hounding the hookers and let 'em be. Prohibition didn't work, why does anyone think making prostitution illegal would? Once again, the service should be inspected, taxed and regulated.

4) Express Lane Death Penalty (ELDeP). If a mope walks into a shopping mall and mows down a dozen shoppers, and his actions are witnessed by a dozen people plus a couple of video cameras, he just bought himself a ticket to the express lane. He should draw his last breath no more than 48 hours later. I see no reason to feed, house, entertain, and provide medical care for this cat for the rest of his life. Why should he take up my oxygen? I think ELDeP should also be provided for any prisoner who kills another prisoner, or who injures or kills a prison guard. Why should those folks be taking up anybody's oxygen?

5) Illegal Aliens. Illegal aliens should have no rights, and their U.S. born children should not be allowed an education in our public schools. They should all be deported as quickly as possible. I have no problem whatsoever with a citizen from another country coming to the U.S. to better their standard of living. However, they should come here legally and become a legal citizen and pay all the wonderful taxes we get to pay. Once again, tax and regulate.

6) Legalize Bloodsport a la gladiatorial combat. If gangs want to have gang wars, let them. The contests would be held in an arena with hand-to-hand combat weapons, not firearms. Innocent citizens would be safely in the stands and wouldn't be caught in the crossfire as it is now when the wars occur on the streets. Let the thugs fight to the death since this seems to be their prime directive anyway. Participation in the contests would be voluntary and legal betting would be allowed; taxed and regulated of course. In my opinion, violent people will always be violent. They will always be a threat even when locked away in prison. I don't think any rehabilitation will change that. They only cease to be violent when they are too aged to cause any more harm. Let these folks work their violence out on each other as well as raise a little tax revenue. This would be a nifty way to reduce gang populations in the prisons by the way.

I have a whole list of platforms on education reform, but those should be listed under the "If I Were Governor of Arkansas" rant. I'll get writing on that right away.

In the meantime I'll make my prediction on the presidential election: McCain will win. I don't think this country is really ready for anything other than a white guy. I think we will have four more years of decreasing personal freedoms and sucky foreign policies and invasions. Life in the U.S. will just be sucky. With McCain in the White House, the 2012 Mayan Doomsday Prophecy doesn't seem so farfetched anymore. McCain seems Red Button happy and we all may end up in a nuclear poof on Dec. 21, 2012.

I'm not a registered voter. If I were to vote, I'd probably vote for Hillary. I don't think Obama has a clue how cut-throat the office of president will be. I don't think he is ready; I don't think he has the 'nads. I think Hillary does. Plus I think she is crazy enough to scare the peedoodle out of other heads of state. We need that now.

I actually considered registering to vote in this election. The one and only time I have ever voted in my life I voted for Bill Clinton for governor when he defeated Frank White. I voted because my employer made me. He toted me to the polls and pointed a finger inside and said, "Go vote for Bill". There were 15 other races on the ballot that day. I voted for Bill and left the others blank.

I looked myself up on the on-line Arkansas Voters Registration website and, to my amazement, discovered I was registered to vote in the neighboring county. Considering that was not the county in which I registered to vote for Bill, I was a little shocked. I'm smelling voter registration fraud. But that's politikin' in the Gret Stet of Arkansaw.

Now ya know.

Speck in '08
The Sick-n-Tired of BS Candidate

Yet Another Weird Dream

Monday night was dream-free and I actually awoke this morning feeling rested. Hooray! A big dose of milk products before bedtime might have had something to do with that.

Sunday night, however, I had another weird dream. I want to record this dream (and all my other dreams for that matter) because I experience déjà vu fairly often. When I tell folks I'm déjà vuing, they look at me as if I've lost my mind. I thought the déjà vuing thing was common since somebody created a name for it and all, but apparently not. Once again I seem to be the odd duck. However, if I have my dreams recorded, I can go back and say, "See! Here it is! Told ya so!!!"

Back to the dream. I was getting married...again. The wedding was at my hometown church, but the room in the dream was unfamiliar. The wedding was to be a small, formal affair. Only family was invited, but with my family that would be about 100 people or so. All my cousins were there looking fabulous as always.

The dream started as the bridal shower was ending. The day's events were a bridal shower in the morning followed by a luncheon, then the ceremony and reception was later that afternoon. When the cousins come in from all over the state, we make a day of it.

Anyway, folks were milling around visiting before lunch and I was picking up all the cards and gifts. I was thinking to myself that my bridesmaids should be gathering this stuff up, not me, I'm the bride. I need to go start getting dressed. There were just a handful of gifts (third wedding, no gifts expected), but folks had brought tons of cards. Funny thing was I had opened all the cards but none of the gifts at the shower.

I was bustling around the room picking up all the cards and gifts trying to get them all in one place so none would get lost. There were about 7-8 small 2" boxes and one big shirt box. The big box was wrapped in a hideous dark rust-colored metallic paper with a huge matching net/wire bow and flowers. It was really ugly wrapping for a wedding gift. It looked more like a birthday present for a grandma.

Among the little boxes there were two round gold foil boxes; they looked kinda like little cheese wheels with rounded edges. One had a big glass stone on one edge, the other did not. They were supposed to represent an engagement and wedding ring. The boxes pulled apart to open 'around the equator' so to speak. I looked at them a moment and thought, "What a clever idea for a box for a wedding gift. I wonder what could possibly be inside this tiny box????"

Then I woke up. Hummm.....

Could this be a sign from the Magic Entrepreneur Fairy telling me the hottest new idea in wedding gift boxes? I love building boxes so that would be right up my alley. They would fly off the shelves if I could just figure out a clever wedding gift that would fit in a box that small. I need a marketing person post haste. Figger out what goes in the box Pris, would ya?

I can smell the money.

Bizarre Dreams

I've been having some really bizarre dreams lately. I've always been a vivid dreamer. They're in color with sounds and smells and I remember them on waking. Apparently that isn't ordinary because when I tell people about the details of the dreams, I get quizzical looks and the questions, "Your dream was in color???", or "You could SMELL something in your dream???" Well yes, of course. Doesn't everybody dream in color and smell-o-vision?

Anywho, I've been having a lot of covert military ops dreams. I've been crawling around through creeks and tunnels and trenches clutching some type of weapon in my hands. Hubby says I shouldn't go to sleep watching The History Channel any more.

THE COVERT OPS DREAM

Last night in my covert ops dream I was dressed in khaki fatigues and my platoon was trying to sneak out of our own base. It was in the middle of the day, the sun was shining brightly, and some huge luncheon awards ceremony was happening. The ceremony was held outside in a space the size of a football field and there was a tall stage on one end. Hundreds of people were on the field seated around tables listening to the speaker on stage.

The stage wasn't straight across, it curved in slightly, concave to the audience. Stretching across the front of the stage was a long table with red, white, and blue bunting draped across the front. People were sitting at this long table, maybe a dozen folks on either side of the speaker; non-military people in civilian clothes.

Our mission was to crawl under the table along the stage to a truck waiting on the other side. The speaker and the two dozen people sitting on the stage knew what was going on and they had pushed their chairs back from the table so we wouldn't be crawling across their feet. The bunting on the table was there to hide our presence from the audience because they weren't supposed to know what we were doing. There was a guy at our end of the stage telling each soldier when to go...."Wait, wait, wait....now GO!" Each soldier would then scramble up under the table and began crawling the length of the stage.

The weapon clutched in my hands today was an old, wooden pump shotgun. While I was standing in line to go under the table the shotgun racked loudly making that unmistakable shotgun racking sound. It was loud enough to give our mission away because the hubbub of the dinner eating was over and everyone was quiet, listening to the speaker. So I had to clutch the shotgun tightly so the slide wouldn't rack again. I clutched it so tightly it came apart in my hands. I had the stock part in my left hand, and the barrel and wooden slide in my right hand. I was squeezing it soooo tightly that the slide splintered into pieces.

Then it was my time to go under the table. I managed to climb onto the stage, which was about four feet off the ground, without a free hand because I was still clutching the shotgun parts in both hands. I was crawling along and had made it by about six people when I woke up.

I woke up in a sweat, realized I could unclench my fists and let go of the dreamland shotgun pieces, and turned over and went back to sleep. Then there was this:

THE NEWSPAPER OFFICE DREAM

It was my first day on the job at a small-town newspaper. I don't know what my job was at the newspaper, I was still unpacking my office supplies. About a dozen women worked in the office; no men. (OK, it was a nightmare, not a dream.)

I somehow knew this day happened to be the editor's first anniversary as the editor so I had purchased a greeting card for her. It was a really cool card. It was aged, hammered, embossed metal, almost like a thin book. It had all kinds of little gewgaw charms hanging on it here and there. The greeting was something benign like, "Congratulations on the First Year!" or something of that nature.

I showed the card to a couple of the women and like a ripple effect, word of the card spread around the office. Somehow like the telephone game, the card's greeting had been misstated with each retelling. In 15 minutes the office grapevine was all abuzz about the "inappropriate" card, and rumor had it that I was going to be fired for it.

Several of the clucking women had met the editor at the door as she arrived for the day and bombarded her with the tale that I had brought "inappropriate" materials to the workplace. They hadn't told her it was a greeting card for her.

She came into the office with a dazed look from all the hen clucking, and followed by all the clucking hens approached me at my desk. She then reamed me for bringing "inappropriate" things to work and told me not to do it again. She turned on her heel and sat at her desk and the clucking flock of hens dissipated.

I stood there just stunned. I picked up the card, walked to her desk, flung it down and said, "Here is the 'inappropriate' material. Read this and tell me what is 'inappropriate' about it." She opened the card, read "Congratulations on the First Year", and realized it was for her. She got a weird look on her face and said simply, "Oh."

I was enraged that she had listened to and believed the gossips without checking the facts herself. I was enraged at the juvenile, gossipy behavior of the women. The corporate culture that tolerates tongue-wagging on that scale will be a miserable place to work. My head was spinning.

I went back to my desk mad as hell to unpack the rest of my office supplies. After just a few seconds I mumbled, "I have to get out of here." I went outside to pace around, smoke a stogie, and calm down. I was back at my desk in about five minutes. I was standing up to unpack the box of supplies. I remember there was an old green stapler and two staple pullers.

(Vanessa, a real childhood chum from junior high, made it into this dream. She was a sweetie. I haven't seen her since about 10th grade.)

Vanessa had the desk next to mine. She said in a snide voice, "Well! You were sure out there a long time. Aren't you even gonna bother to sit down now?"

The office manager lady piped up at this point. The office manager was a little Napoleanette. She was about 4'9" tall and about that wide. She had mousey brown hair pulled back in a tight bun and horn-rimmed glasses. She piped up and said in a fakey sweet voice, "That's OK if she was out there a while. She can make up the time tomorrow." The fakey sweet voice came with daggers as if to say, "I'm gonna make your life a living hell, bitch."

Me: Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Saturday!

Her: That's right. We work half a day on Saturday.

Me: Why????

Her: Oh, it's not so bad. If we work on Saturday, we get to leave thirty minutes early Monday through Friday.

Me: But you work from 8:00 a.m to 5:30 p.m. now. When do you take off early?

Her: We leave thirty minutes early at 5:30. If we didn't work on Saturday we would have to stay until 6:00 p.m.

They came to work for a sixth day and worked four hours so they could get off 2.5 hours early the other five days of the week. The stupidity of that logic made my head explode. This was just my first few hours on this new job and I realized I had made a HUGE mistake coming to work here.

Then I woke up in a sweat again.

I don't know what is going on in my head to cause such bizarre dreams, but I wake up more tired and stressed than when I went to sleep. "Sweet Dreams" doesn't seem to be in my vocabulary these days.

Sigh.