Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Point Taken

Okay, I’ve devolved to the level of point grubbing. You know that thing where they track points for the shows I volunteer for at the Performing Arts Center? You get a few perqs for volunteering so many shows: priority scheduling, show tickets. I was never going to get to the highest level. 100 shows in a year? Maybe if I was retired. Maybe. But I am homing in on 40. And two of my shows didn’t show up on my point tally. And it was making me nuts. So nuts that I actually e-mailed the volunteer coordinator and pestered her for them. I’m so embarrassed.

Cause that’s really not how I want to see myself. At all. I really want to be this “Oh, whatever. It’s for a good cause. Que sera.” kind of person who just let’s the points fall where they may, and basks in the glow of a good deed done. It’s volunteerism. I'm above all that.

But the fact that there are levels, and I could get to another level, and they’re not giving my points – aaaarrrrrrggghhhh! It’s just turning me into a person I don’t want to be. Part of it is the goal oriented thing. And part is the priority scheduling. I can get in a day ahead of most other people? Sweet! I luv being first. And Rock of Ages is coming, and dammit, I want opening night! Gimmee my points! Gimmee gimmee gimmee!

See? It happened again. Seriously. I don’t want to be that girl. Because, really, it’s for a good cause. And the perqs aren’t the point. Really they aren’t. But here I am. Petting my point total like Golem at Tiffany’s. Honestly. I can’t even look myself in the eye.

Monday, March 7, 2011

How can we sleep while our beds are burning?

The more people talk about radicalized Muslims (especially with what’s going on in the Middle East), the more I think “Yeah, you better hope they stay Muslims. Cause if they ever get a load of communism, you can kiss your sweet gas good-bye.” Either they’ll find away around that “religion is the opiate of the people” clause, or they’ll come up with some sort of Mohammadan/Marxist hybrid. And if conservatives think they hate Islam as much as they hate communism, they’re going to freak over those two great tastes in one.

Really, it’s kind of a recipe for a Marxist revolution more than an American one. While there was economic inequality between the Colonies and England, the worst of the excesses of the rich took place far from the Founding Fathers. It’s one thing to know that your labor is keeping the fat cats fat in a land far away. It’s another to have your face rubbed in it every day. Which is very much what the OPEC countries have had going on for decades. A very few have benefited greatly, and, in my humble opinion, used a false dedication to Islam as a red herring to keep the proles in line. If a lot of those same young men who are putting so much effort into reading the Koran started parsing the Communist Manifesto or a certain little red book, they might find just as much to inspire their fiery devotion.

Because when the huddled masses do rebel (France, Russia, China, Cuba), it becomes just as much about making sure the rich have less as it is about the poor having more. Bloody revolution.

Once upon a time, it would have been Russia being a communist state that would have turned those Islamic firebrands against the idea of going red. If there’s anyone they’d like to blow to smithereens as much as the US, it’s the Russia. But the Ruskies went capitalist, so that’s out. And, given how Sharia works, obviously a totalitarian state is not a turnoff. So, people better hope that the majority in the Middle East keeps believing that there is only one God and his name is Allah. If they go commie, we’ll never see another drop of oil out of the Gulf again.

TIME: Quotes of the Day