Running, Sexism & Normal People...

Today is one of those days where I thank the powers that be that A) I am cynical, and B) I have a sense of humor. Those things often, I suspect, prevent me from committing acts of violence.

Why yes, I did go running today (99.3 degrees at 11 am when I left, woohoo!), and the whole running thing plays into this tale of sexism and normal people…

So yeah, settle on in, grab a drink, smoke if ya got em, kick on back and enjoy…but please, maintain your cynicism and sense of humor…or get pissed, whichever moves you more. Some of y’all might think my sexism radar is dead, ground to gravel by my profession or whatever, but no. While it might be blunted, it still works.

When I run, I (gasp) dress like other runners in what is appropriate for the weather and the act of running. Today, as it was hot, I was in one of those sports bra things that is really more like a tank top (longer, covers to the just above the belly button) and soccer, not running, soccer shorts (which are still light weight, but a little bit longer). Green and white, respectively…and ye old running shoes, shades, and CSI baseball cap. Totally not sexbot, yo! I’d actually prefer to run in trunks, like competitive in race runners wear, and I will occasionally wear those on an indoor track (they look like swimsuit bottoms, exhibit A), and I like them because they don’t ride up/bunch up/stick to you when you get sweaty…but yeah, outside, running on the street in public? Um, no. Wouldn’t want to wave a red flag at a bull or anything. So yeah, running, in normal runner clothes, like every other female runner I ever see out running in this kind of weather.

So anyway, I am running along, and I see another runner out and about. I see him pretty often. Like me, I figure he probably works at night (due to the times I see him), and like me, he is insane enough to run at high noonish in this kind of heat, because he and I are the only two out and about. Now, let me stress this: This man is hot. Or so I think anyway. Late 20’s, early 30’s I would guess, with that lean/wiry athletic type of body I like, a nice tan, and dark brown hair which is wavy and probably as long as my own. (With highlights, no less). Anyway, I see him, he sees me, we see each other often enough to wave (he is on the other side of the street), and as we’re passing like two sweaty ships in the blazing sun…I note he is practically naked. Shoes. Little tiny red running shorts. That’s it. And while I am sure he gets the gaze from passing hetero female motorists…he’s not the one who gets honked at. And at that moment I am both enraged and jealous that this sweaty, gleaming, sexy, stunning man can be outside running around practically naked, and while yes, carnal thoughts undoubtedly occur in minds other than my own upon seeing him, he is not the one getting honked at. It’s my more heavily clothed and less attractive self who is. Why? Well, ‘cause I’m a chick.

Anyway, I note this and continue on my cynical way, vestigial feminist angst rolling around in my head about how I am not at work, I am out running ffs, and dudes feel they have the fucking entitlement to drive on by (coming up from behind no less) and honk at me (which you know, can shock, scare, surprise you) and how the hot, half naked guy probably doesn’t have to deal with that, yadda, yadda (but who knows, maybe he gets honked at too), mental explicative, explicative when I am distracted by, of all things, the smoothie hut in the strip mall I am now alongside of.

Woo, smoothies. Dammit, I decided I needed a smoothie right then and there. And when I run, I always carry a little pack that has my wallet, cell phone, and...er…smokes and lighter…in it. (yes, I realize cancer sticks clash horribly with running, but fuck, I am addicted to both). So I run on over to ye olde Smoothie Hut and get myself a small mango smoothie! Umm, so icy and mango-y! But since I am a big old sweaty mess and I did also, hell, want a smoke, I went out to the outside café part seating, found myself an obscure out of the way table, and sat down to enjoy my smoothie and smoke. This also gave me room to stretch out my legs, the toe point/flex way…not like full out stretching, but something to avoid cramping up. There is one other soul out there, a young guy, sort of mellow hippie looking type, also having a smoothie and a smoke, he has dreads, a couple of tattoos, is reading a book, and as we’re sitting there, I notice the normal people strolling by, staring at both of us respectively.

Now see, when I was a kid, my mom made a big deal about us not staring at people from a very young age. I am wondering if that life lesson is no longer popular, but hey, it’s not just the kids staring. It’s pretty much everyone walking by. And I am thinking to myself, I am in fucking running clothes, ffs. I am wearing more than half the people outside today! What, do I have a booger hanging out of my nose or something? Toilet paper stuck to my shoe? Then, it dawns on me (sage nod in Kim’s direction)…my ink. My ink is showing. The barcode, the hand, the stars (no Eastern Promises comments, please), Set, Magneto…my ink is showing. I had the sudden urge to know how many of the people walking past giving me and mellow dread dude the eyeball had ink of their own…and if it was something cheesy they’d picked off a wall. A rose, a dolphin, some Chinese character that they don’t even know what it really means…that thought causes me to smirk.

I finish my smoothie, my smoke, get up, and head on back home, running speed. I generally slow down to a brisk walk about two blocks from home, the whole cool down thing, and as I go into my subdivision, a guy in a red truck who was behind me slows down to a crawling pace, and turns in front of me. He’s doing the whole checking me out thing, and nodding, as if to say “wow, I approve”, he literally almost stops, making sure that I notice him, his barely rolling vehicle, his expression and approving nod, and I look at this guy, the single family home neighborhood he’s turning into, where he probably lives with a wife and kids, and here he is leering at me like some drunken frat boy and doing everything in his power to make sure I notice him doing it…and I wanted to throw something at his truck, or follow him home and tell his wife, or drag him out of that Ford and get a good look at him, to see if he would pass my muster and be worthy of my leer, if I would even give him a second fucking glace if he wasn’t blocking the damn road and making an ass of himself. And I’m not the type that always sees sexism in everything: I mean, if I’m at the gym and some guy also working out complements me on my abs, or forearms, or body in general, I don’t take it as sexist. At work, sure, it’s sexist, but it’s expected. The body is what pays the bills. But when I am a damn mess after a run in 100 weather and just trying to get back to my house and some asshat makes such a display of his obvious noticing of me, hell, you’d have to be a corpse not to notice it. I flipped him off and yelled, “not if you were the last man on earth”, then picked up my pace and headed home, still fuming.

I betcha half naked red running shorts man doesn’t have to put up with that shit.

Run Like Hell

I laced up my first pair of running shoes, a gift from my uncle (also a runner), when I was seven years old. Back then, I’d run after school, before it was dark, back down behind the neighborhood and along a creek bed where no one else ever seemed to be, at least not while I was there. I remember it being half adventure, half exercise, as it was kind of an overgrown, unpaved sort of place where every time I ran, I’d notice something different, where the change of season was evident by how green, how brown, how flowered, how muddy and wet and cold everything seemed to be. I ran because I loved doing it, in that strange, pure way that only kids seem to be capable of, and also because it was peaceful. No one else around, no expectations, no demands, no implications, nothing more than the mere act of putting one foot in front of the other and dodging the occasional tree limb. I’d make up stories in my head while I ran: I was a cop, chasing down the bad guy. I was James Bond. I was on the run from a werewolf. I was carrying the torch into Olympic Stadium. I was heading into the end zone to catch a pass from Broadway Joe. I was a panther. I was riding a horse. I was scouting hostile territory. I was a kid, with a kid’s imagination, running.

As I got older, middle school, high school, I ran to clear my head. Early morning, afternoon, in track practice, in rain and wind and weather, hell bent for leather! I ran on days so hot you figured you could cook an egg on the sidewalk, and other kids were so bored they were trying. I’d be up before the sun was, in, when I could afford them, good running shoes, doing my thing. Because it was still peaceful. Still something I could do and be blissfully, mindlessly alone if I so chose. It gave me some time to let my mind wonder, or ponder things that I wanted to ponder, and by that time, I’d also grown to love the hurt. As runners call it: The Wall. The point where muscles strain in protest and lungs sear and side stitches threaten to double you over or make you vomit and all your mind and body want to do is drop but you know, you know once you’ve done it, if you push past that…bliss. Endorphin rush. Autopilot. Synapses firing and muscle and bone moving like a machine, where something in the mind takes over with the body and I would feel more aware, more in touch with the cosmos or whatever else you want to call it than any other time. Even amid the agony there is pure mind body harmony and ecstasy and gods and empires fall and new ones arise in their place and everything would seem so charged, so focused, so electric in my head that no matter what bullshit or strife or emotional flat line antisocial or twitchy OCD thing I was dealing with I was aware of the fact that holy shit…the world is in color, the circuits are online, and great shout out to god, goddess and all the little deities, I was alive! I’d hit that place and keep going, drawing every breath and drop of lifeblood out of that rush. I’d go until blisters wore on my feet and even after a cool down I was soaking in sweat and looking like some flushed yet bleached out thing sicked out of hell because that feeling, in a time in my life when so many others were simply not there or bitter or not to be trusted, that was real and amazing and wonderful. It was also a cheap and easy thrill. After all, you can put Band-Aids over blisters.

Late in high school and college, running lost a little bit of allure for me, because unlike when I was a little kid, it wasn’t about exploration and love of the run and stories in my head, or about hitting The Wall at full force and breaking through it to see what waited on the other side and reveling in the agony and ecstasy. It was about doing it because I was expected to do it. I had shoes, and that college funding obligation thing, therefore I ran. A bit more like the agony and the irony, really. So when I finished college, I took the shoes, threw them in the closet, and didn’t look at or think of them for more than a few years. My desire to run? It had walked away.

I played other sports, just as I had all along, took up other hobbies. Some I still have, others have fled or been shaved down due to life, work, a relationship, new hobbies. Some give me a feeling similar to running, a sense that is related in some way: working with weights, fire spinning, fucking, but several years after I’d pitched the shoes in the closet, I realized none of those things were quite the same, and I missed the feel of those shoes, my feet in those shoes on the road, the track, the path, wherever they might find themselves. I missed the feel of running itself. The serenity, the alone time, the build up, The Wall, the Rush, the agony and the ecstasy, the feeling of muscle and bone pistoning away with machine like perfection, the simple calm and amazing epiphany of mind. I missed it all. So I dug out those shoes, laced them up, and did my penance for neglecting one of my personal gods. That time I did puke. But hell if I didn’t feel alive.

I’ve been through several pairs of shoes since then. And no longer running because it’s expected has made it wonderful and amazing and mine all mine again. It’ll be close to 100 again tomorrow, and truthfully, I like that. So tomorrow again, I will lace up those shoes. Run. Sweat. Maybe hurt, maybe not. Maybe push into The Wall and Beyond, maybe not. But I do not doubt for a second that it will make me feel alive. I might even pretend to be James Bond. Who knows? But it will be me, my feet, and the road.

I don’t run to be healthy, or thin, or in shape. I run because it’s something that’s mine, that I do alone, that makes me feel human, and sometimes even more. I run because nearly 30 years since that first pair of shoes…I still love it. I took the first ribbon I ever won for running back home several years back. It was buried with the uncle who bought me that first pair of shoes. Where ever he is now, I hope he’s still running too, not for times, or trophies, or body image…but because he still loves it.

Mental Note to Self...

Do NOT...

Decide to run 2.5 miles up to a new salon to get a manicure, decide to try out the free offer they have on tanning, then run 2.5 miles home...

in 100 degree weather.

EVER AGAIN.

Tech Mom and A Monday Guest Rant!

So, tis Monday. The hand is feeling much better. The weather is a bit fall like. I went running this morning and bumped into Tech Mom. We introduced ourselves; she has a really cool really Scandinavian name. We had a brief conversation about the intersection of death near our respective houses; apparently I am not the only one who has nearly been flattened by asshole drivers at that particular light! She was talking about her daughters (mystery solved, fraternal twins) and how one was starting brownies today and one was staring little league hockey. I also noted aside from the Ares zodiac tattoo she has on her calf, she has the god, you know, the dude, Aries, on her back (she was running in a sports bra today, no tech industry t-shirt) and Thor’s hammer on her arm. Whoever did her work did a damn good job; her ink is about as close to perfect as I have ever seen. Oh, I also learned she is a programmer. I like tech mom. Anyone who has a van with a bumper sticker that says “my other car is a Harley” and has Thor’s damn hammer and Aries as tattoos is cool in my book.

Travel plans have occurred. I am flying down to see das Family in Orlando on Saturday. Figures, fall starts here, and I go to freakin’ Florida for week. No work vacation, so I plan on chillin’ and relaxing, maybe hit Universal Studios or something. Mr. E will be staying here and holding down the fort, so to speak.

And now, a guest rant!

This is actually a comment that Min (Rosa’s Butcher Half) left on the Titty Debate post, but Min has a tendency to knock my socks off, make me smirk, and make me say “humm” all at once, so, here for the masses, I highlight the Amazing Min, and open the floor to discussion.

“WRT: To Mary Jane, I don’t get the feminist focus on men either, and for as much as so many feminists deny it and say they are looking out for women, it is often about the men. It’s about what the men think and what the men do and I am not sure I understand it. This is sort of a response to several of your latest posts, but yeah, what the hell is with feminists, and, no offense, the het ones?

I’m a lesbian. In my 29 years on earth I’ve never had sex with a man, never been interested in men sexually, never even been naked in the same room with a man where there was any sort of sexual tension at all. I’ve known I was a lesbian since I was about eleven, and since I was never interested in men, I felt no need or desire to be attractive to them. I still shave though, everything. I live in a hot climate, I swim and surf, I’m heavily tattooed and pierced, and I like showing those things off to the women I, lesbian, have sex with. I tattoo people for a living, and having to shave their hair off to do it grosses me out. Shaving is actually frowned upon by older women in my culture, and most lesbians don’t care if I shave or not, but I still do it. I also work out.

That’s just the way I am, and who I am, and fuck anyone who has a problem with that.

So when I see this bullshit about implants and beauty rituals and all this other crap, I have to wonder if it really is a straight girl thing. Ren’s fake tits, long hair, eyeliner, sexual proclivities, porn making and style of dress mean nothing to me. I’m not competing with her for anything. I’m not interested in what she’s interested in. I don’t feel Ren, or any other woman for that matter, reflects poorly on me. I don’t feel I am being judged by her or by anyone else. I live in Miami, “sexy” women with “perfect” bodies, blonde hair, tans, and implants grow on trees around here. Aside from California, I’m willing to bet Miami is the most plastic place on earth. I wander around here as the short, butch Korean girl with all the tattoos and I feel just fine. I’m not competing for male attention. I’m not looking at Ren, or any other woman like her and feeling shitty about the way I look. I can look at a woman like Ren and see that she’s attractive, or more specifically, attractive to a male eye, but this doesn’t effect me. I’m a lesbian; it’s not about the men. I don’t care that I might have stubble in my pits or cellulite on my thighs. I don’t care that the Henchwoman is 3 inches taller than I am and four sizes smaller. I don’t care about heels, or diets, or any of that shit. I’m not attracted to men, so I am not interested in attracting them. Straight girls like men, and therefore might be. So if a woman engages in practices and beauty rituals that are appealing to men (even if they are socially conditioned to find whatever attractive) because they are interested in attracting men, what’s the big deal? Yeah, a male appreciation of more variety would be nice, but that can’t necessarily be forced on people, and jumping all over people who do fit that level of beauty is fucking stupid. What, should Ren and all the other strippers and porn girls and models or whatever else make themselves less attractive to men? Should they not profit from their genetic luck or surgical help? I really have to ask, is this great feminist concern really a straight girl thing?

Also, I alter people’s bodies for a living. I permanently mark and disfigure them. I profit from this. I actually make a very handsome living doing so. People come in to me to get their natural skin tattooed, pierced, branded, and scarified. How is that so different than implants? The “conventional appeal” and “normalizations” argument won’t work here by the way, considering there are probably a lot more women out there with tattoos and piercing than there are with breast implants, as well as tons of more women with natural breasts (normal), than fake ones (unusual).

Oh, and rough porn? REAL lesbians make some damn rough porn, and it also has nothing to do with the men.

So, anyone, answers?" -Min

Call me curious on this one too.-RE

“Bleh” (tales of whore ennui)

That about sums it up. I have fire stories, but I’m just not in the mood to tell them. Or the feminists in a hot tub story either. I’m grumpy and tired and restless and just bleh. So yeah, on with the bleh and oddity and stuff. Sorry, but you’re just gonna have to take it…or, you know, stop reading or something.

So, I was up early this morning and I went running. I’d somewhat spaced the fact that public school is back in session for the children (we live rather close to an elementary school), so, whilst running I saw a whole lot of kids- older ones in groups, younger ones accompanied by a parent- walking to school. Nice weather for it and all, really. But yeah, I am observing whilst doing the running thing, and the kids all looked really excited, that whole second day of school thing…not yet over it and all…dressed in their new back to school clothes, with their new backpacks and tennis shoes and all, grinning and happy and that was kind of uplifting and all, until I wondered which one of those kids would end up being the whipping post for the others and all…but yeah, then I was checking out the parents with their little ones: mostly moms, but some dads too…and the dads were all super casual walking the kid(s) to school…shorts, t-shirts, like maybe they were headed home to mow the lawn or something, but the moms were not so casual…one or two who looked like they’d be trading out the comfortable shoes for pumps and flying to the office afterwards (but opted for walking the kids rather than wasting any precious, precious, expensive gas…hey, gas ain’t cheap…) but most of them looked like house moms…dressed up though. Make up on, long flowing floral skirts, hair done, sensible but stylish sandals…like they were showing off their new back to school gear to the other moms just like their kids were doing with each other…all of them but one, one gal I’ve seen around the neighborhood, also a runner (but she runs at night), a woman who I happen to know owns a mini-van, is a married mother of three, and her other car is a Harley. Not sure what she does for a living, but I am guessing something tech related…because every time I see her she is in some sort of computer promo industry t-shirt: Geek Squad, Unisys, Dell, and she’s the one hold out…walking her two super blonde daughters to school- one in a pink and white skirt set, hair up in ribbons, the other in a NY Yankees t-shirt and plaid shorts, hair cut super short in back and sort of long/spiky and casually messy on top, girls that could be twins but obviously have their own styles…kinda like mom, who is sticking out amid all the other moms like a sore thumb in her baggy cargo shorts, black “Intel inside” t-shirt, unmade up face, lean runner body, ultra simplistic ponytail, big ol’ Ares zodiac sign tattoo on her calf and ears spiked full of earrings…and I got to wondering, how does she feel when she sees the other moms? Does she feel out of place? Does she care? Is she aware of the fact after she smiles and says hello to the other moms, as soon as she has stepped past them there is this look on their faces that says, sure enough, that she does not belong? Does she go to PTA meetings? Does she chaperone field trips? Does she volunteer time in the kiddy computer lab? Has she ever rolled on up to that elementary school on her motorcycle? Do people consider her weird, or treat her kids differently because of the way she looks? So I actually stop running, do some stretching, and watch her. She walks her kids to the door, pulls off her shades, gives them both a kiss on the cheek, fixes a bow in the ones hair, gives the other a high five, then ushers them inside. I go ahead and continue my run, wondering about her, and how she fits in with the mommy set and the play dates and all that other stuff. I wonder about how her, being different from all the other moms affects her, if it affects her, if she’s aware of it and if she cares. I wonder if it affects her kids and if they care. Eh, Wednesday morning running pondering.

So, I then run on up to the store to buy some stuff…most of it female stuff, body wax, cotton balls, hey, look, a cool new color hair dye that looks interesting, and some Gatorade. Then I come home, check my mail, and see that some of my latest porn (as in mine, me)- of the photo variety- is waiting in my mail box, so I kick off the running shoes, grab the Gatorade and a smoke and start looking at it and totally spiral into a huge funk of porn whore ennui.

Hey, it happens. But it doesn’t usually happen to me. And it’s not that I think the photos are bad. Actually, quite the opposite. But I’m sitting there looking at the cheesecake type pictures thinking about that post Kim has over at her place about Jenna Jameson, how people are tearing her apart for being too skinny and too fake and too porny and what the hell else ever and I am saying to myself well, I can see my ribs, I can see my hip and collar bones, I can tell there are a bones in my shoulders and wrists and yep, girls built like this usually don’t have tits this big unless they are fake…is that too skinny? And then I am saying to myself in my head oh shut up! Stop. You eat all the time, you like eating, you work out a lot, you’re pretty dang happy with how you look, so yeah, if the tech geek mom with the Harley doesn’t let it get to her, why are some assholes stupid insults towards Jenna Jameson getting to you like this? And then the other part of my mind tells the part of my mind that is telling me to shut up to also shut up, what with the recent eviscerating because of my “lookism” post and people’s refusal to admit or own up to the fact that my straw is indeed made of real clay, flesh and blood it’s no wonder I’m feelin’ a little sensitive….and, auuughhhh! Ren proceeds to chain smoke a little and let her brain fight with itself for a while.

Hey Kim, is this space talk?

Anyway, I move past the cheesecake and onto the fuck pictures, but the ennui is still in full effect. I am remembering that I had a lot of fun doing the shoot, I liked the people I was working with, even if the guy really wasn’t my physical ideal (too hairy), and yeah, while I do that whole horrible gonzo misogynistic degrading smut and filth, I am noting that in every photo it’s pretty evident that I am there willingly, and having fun, and being just as mean and hateful and snarly and aggressive as the guy is…in fact, in most of the photos I’m on top and you know, from certain angles and when looking at certain parts of my body and all you can tell if I am not playing the part of the aggressor, I am definitely giving as good as I get…and then the burned out annoying part of my brain starts in with the not like it will ever matter to some people, you could be cutting the dudes throat while you’re fucking him but because his erect penis is going into you…well, you’re still going to be that patriarchal tool who is just doing what the menz want you to do. Doesn’t matter how deep in his flesh your nails are buried, it doesn’t matter how hard you are pulling his hair, how often you’re the one doing the slapping, spitting, snarling, how enthusiastic you seem when getting throat fucked or having anal sex, how into it and vicious and snarling and enjoying you come across, all they are ever going to see is sellout first, victim second…and all that skinny/porny/fake stuff. They ignore that part of it and all they see, imagine, ever get any idea of, for any porn, all porn, forever and ever amen is that photo right there, the one with you on your knees with your head on the floor splayed open with cum on your face. That’s it. That’s all. That’s porn, all of it, for them.

It’s just the money shot. It’s not what is, or what has happened before, or what goes on before or after, it’s that image.

And I told myself to shut the hell up again, but yeah, I closed the file without looking at everything. The rest will have to wait until later. I just can’t seem to want to look at the rest of it right now. Ha, for the first time ever, my goddamn porn is depressing me, and not because of what it is or that it’s me or because of what I’m doing, but because of other fucking people, people I don’t even like.

I feel like I want to go for a ride on that Mom’s Harley and just, well, go. Get moving. Get out and away. I want to be able to tell that annoying little imp in my head to fuck off and shut up and have it actually listen. I just can’t seem to do it today.

I’m tired, in a whole lot of ways.

Two Posts You Should Read...And a running story.

Kim sets some people straight on how "kindly" thin folk are treated...

BlackAmazon is, well, amazing...and wonderful...and...well, read it.

So, I went running this morning, and dang it is hot out there...but anyhow, I run past a park sometimes, like this morning, and my leg decided it wanted to cramp up in a most unhappy way, so I went into the park to sit down and work it out, and there were a lot of little kids running around and playing and such, tis summer after all, and I noted these two kids, maybe six or seven, and it struck me, watching them, that those two are how we are before people and society fuck with us.

One was a little girl, blonde, fair, cute as could be, and one was a little boy, black, also cute as could be, and while everyone else was on the slides and swings or tossing a ball around, these two were parked under a tree reading comic books, X-Men, Superman, the Flagship titles of Marvel and DC, pointing at art pannels doing the whole "Wow, look at this! Superman is awesome!" thing just having a great old time. Their moms were watching them, not sitting together (the white mom had a very, very tiny baby in a stroller in the shade and the black mom had an older girl who was running around the playground, so yeah, attention was devided and all), but occasionally looking at them and smiling rather blandly at each other, and I wondered what they were thinking...

But the kids? The kids weren't probably thinking anything other than how cool Superman and Storm are and how nice it was to have someone who prefered reading in the shade to running around on a hot playground there to enjoy that coolness with....

There is Justice in the Universe!!!

Okay, so, yes, today I went running, like I do a lot of days. As a few of you now know, I have odd luck at traffic lights while running. I obide by the laws of traffic lights when running...I wait my turn, stay in the crosswalk, look for the "hey, you without the car, you can move now" guy on the lights, all that...YET, it if often seems I am the only one who does...especially at this one light up the road from my house, where an incident with a can of soup and an Escalade occurred, among other things. I don't know what it is about THAT extremely well marked and easily seen four way stop with crosswalks and lights that removes all brain power from the people behind the wheels of large vehicles, but it must be the motorists version of a temporal vortex or something...because today, as I am crossing the street there, in the cross walk, with the signal and all that legal stuff, some schmuck in a big ass SUV, you guesses it, turns RIGHT into me. As in, contact of his grill on my person. Fortunately he is not going fast at all, yet, sure enough, my ass met the pavement (I am fine). I jump up and glare at him (best as I can, I am only 5'2", the hood of his car is about shoulder height on me) and POINT at the crosswalk, then at the walk signal on the light...

and wouldn't you know, on the other side of the four-way stop, there is, lo-and-behold, a STATE TROOPER. Now see, generally, I am not fond of seeing Johnny Law, but today, oh yes, hello, officer....so, the State Trooper has witnessed this, flashes HER (hehehe- Janie Law!) lights, sounds her siren once, drives on over, asks me if I am okay, and proceedes to write the driver of the SUV a ticket.

This made Ren happy. Justice in the Universe.

Tales from the road...

Also known as running stories. I think I need a new tag for running stories. See, truth is, whilst out running is when I truly get a slice of Americana as it were... the gym and out running is where I see the majority of "normal people" in their daily habitat and all...

So, breaking in the new tag (old running entries will be added later), here we go...the morning run.

It's getting warmer here, today when I headed out it was about 72 or so, moderately humid, so well, yeah, I've ditched the sweat shirt and am just doing the shorts (umbro soccer shorts...greatest invention ever!), shoes and sports bra thang...because well, I sweat a lot. A lot of women don't seem to sweat at all, much less a lot, but I am not one of them. Soo, anyway, off I go. My normal run is about three miles. I've been pushing that up a bit lately because there is are a few races I want to do this summer, and yeah, longer than three miles they are. So, I am running, and while most folk either run much earlier in the morning or later in the evening before/after work or when it is getting cooler, there are other runners out and about...so I am running along and this other runner, male, runs by, and well, I too am a letch and he was worth letching over, and we pass eachother and I am fairly certain the mutual evil Gaze action going on might have given us both whiplash, and frankly, we're both lucky there weren't any telephone poles or something around for us to brain ourselves on ala a cartoon character. Damn. That's all I am gonna say. And yes, by staring wantonly at his ass I did note he too was wearing umbros.

So, with a lust induced smile on my face, I continued my run, Frank Sinatra playing on the walkman (fuck i-pods, I am Old Skool like a deceptacon, baby)! All is good, there is a nice breeze going, the allergies have not made me feel too mortal, my rather tempermental knee is feeling just fine. It is a good run. I make it to the half way point, sneak in a quick detour to the 7-11 to grab a water, have some, then head on back. So, I am running along and there is this black Olds, new model, parked on the street, pretty car, so I give it a longer look...long enough to read the three bumper stickers on it, which read as follow:

"God will Bless America when America Turns Back to God"
"Abortion is not a choice any real woman makes"
&
"Absentance Only is a Family Value"

I admit I stopped cold and read them again...backed up even to do so...just to make sure I'd actually read them right and all. I am pretty sure I shook my head ala a cartoon character at that moment as well. I really, at that moment, wanted to see what the owner of that car looked like. Where they male or female? What age? I glanced in the car and what was in it made me think the owner was probably female (small floral bag, hairbrush, "people" magazine, carseat). Mildly annoyed, I continued my run. I wondered if the child the carseat indicated was a boy or a girl, and what mom would think about issues such as abortion and absentance only when they were a teenager, what they would do if said child ever ended up with an unwanted pregnancy. I wondered a few things.

I wondered how typical of the "normal American" that attitude is. I decided I probably would not like the answer.

Still a good run though.