Things That Make You Go Hmm

Though I've attended church for much of my adult life, I've never considered my pastor du jour as a spiritual guide. I knew they were overworked, underpaid, and on another plane altogether. I couldn't see bothering them with my little problems. Most of the frontline spiritual guidance I've received has been from my 12-step sponsor. Last night I talked with the one who counseled me for many years. "Julie" was much younger than I, she'd started the program at an early age. I didn't. She was a performer too, and I felt like she understood the special problems of melding that crazy life with anything called sanity. Our drug of choice was food, and as a ballet dancer she certainly knew about the extremes of indulgence and deprivation that I struggled with. When a ballet dancer tells you you're too thin, you better listen. She was a perfect combination of New Age flakery and hard-headed common sense for me as she helped me pound my beliefs and attitudes out of the theoretical into the now.

Over the years our relationship sloshed into close friendship, maybe like sisters, though neither of us would know what that was like. I think I was able to provide comfort and support for her on occasion; surely I learned something in my extra years. We retired from our professions at about the same time. I moved away, but we kept in touch. She was trying to get a college education--dancers don't have the luxury of getting a degree when other people do; the performing years are too scarce and precious. She was eligible for financial aid , but she had no job skills. Fortunately, life as a dancer had prepared her to live on peanuts (styrofoam, in some cases) and work at jobs like retail, waitress, companion to the elderly.

Then she became a stripper and began taking home $300/night. It was good to see her able to afford basic necessities. Maybe we could decrease poverty if we made sure that high school graduates could do a good table dance before we turn them loose on the world. The sex industry sure pays better than anything with a keyboard or any of those other "job skills" we make them learn. Does this bother anybody but me? It's not the "morality" involved. I'm not picking up the first stone. But where we put our money shows what we value, what is most important to us. Well, we always knew no one cared about our art. Someone showed me a charitable fundraising effort on the web that involved paying to see breasts. Wildly successful, I'm sure.

Julie told me last night that the worst had happened, her greatest fear that we'd discussed for several years. She was arrested. "Lewd behavior?" I said. "That's better than prostitution." (Strippers can be arrested for prostitution on the flimsiest excuses--or none.) "No," she said. "Prostitution is a Class C misdemeanor. Lewd behavior is Class A, just under a felony." (Priorities again?) She didn't even know she'd been arrested until she discovered the outstanding warrant out. (Don't they have to give you a ticket?) She turned herself in and sat handcuffed in a cell for six hours. Horrible, but she gave thanks it was only six hours.

She's got a good lawyer, and she had the necessary $4000 put aside for this contingency. She's positive she's never seen the vice cop. ("Good looking, clean cut, dark-haired man? I definitely would have remembered," she said.) In a few weeks I'll go visit her, and we'll shop for the appropriate trial clothes. Ugly accountant-type stuff, or whatever the lawyer recommends. My MBA's good for something at last. In a few months I'll go sit in the courtroom when she's tried and, I pray, released. It's the least I can do for my spiritual counselor.

9:24:37 PM    

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Pentagon Spy Office to Close "House and Senate negotiators have decided to close a Pentagon office that was developing a vast computerized terrorism surveillance system and bar spending that would allow those high-tech spying tools to be used against Americans on U.S. soil."

We can go back to the library now?

8:03:22 PM    

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Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die Some technologies are so blatantly obnoxious that the human race would rejoice if they were summarily executed. A humorist and science fiction writer [Texas Bruce Sterling] offers some candidates.

7:04:07 PM    

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North Korea Calls Rumsfeld Illiterate Psychopath"SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea described Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a dictatorial psychopath and a politically illiterate old man..." Korean news agency KCNA said, "It is not likely at all that he would speak truth as he is obsessed with wantonly harassing peace and security in different parts of the world and igniting wars. His outbursts, therefore, cannot be construed otherwise than a desperate shrill cry of a psychopath on his death bed." It said Rumsfeld was cursed and hated worldwide.

Don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.

6:59:20 PM    

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