i wish i was as good as

chocolate milk

...but there's not much i can do about that

Rozzi Daime on Ego.

Ego. The single most destructive trait in all human beings (other than lack of integrity, but I'm a little sensitive about that today, so that is tomorrows blog). This 3 letter word will ruin every relationship, and when you get down to it, what else do we have in life other than relationships? Our relationship with ourselves, with God, with other people, with our surroundings, we are supported by all of these supernatural elements, and yet, we think that we have the answer to solve all of lives mysteries with our own Ego. I don't prentend for one moment that we are not powerful beings, and that we were sent here to grow, evolve and create, and that the laws of the universe are not our true laws, but what i am saying is that if we think that by standing in our Ego, we will ever be able to acheive our greatness, then we are saddly mistaken.
Lets take it back for a moment and define, Ego: the self; the individual as self-aware.
Now that doesnt seem to be too bad does it?

Its not, by an enlightened sense and understanding of self. But most of us humans operate on self-preseveration, and that is where our Ego likes to play. It will convince us that we are something we are not, just to prevent us from having to deal with what is.

So how do we balance the Ego? By being aware not only of self, but of God, of our surroundings, of those we interact with on a daily. and the Ego will quite, because after all self-awareness is the first step, to Universal Understanding.

car alarms

......are a part of the sound wallpaper of any city. we're so used to cars crying wolf that no one takes the sirens and flashing lights seriously-when was the last time you thought a hysterical car was really being stolen? the trouble with alarms is that they're too dumb to see whether someone's actually slim-jimming the door. instead, the typical system relies on vibration or proximity sensors, which means it's just as likely to be triggered by a passing truck. the result: endless false positives. of course, good car thieves know how to thwart every system with nary a peep anyway..........

things that don't suck:

tv screens in the back of airplane seats, twice baked potatoes, dryer sheets, dvrs, the set design on mad men, farmers' matkets, tap water, touchscreens, scissors, pocket knives, thumb drives, kites, strike-anywhere machines, doorstops, run-flat tires, netflix, noise-canceling headphones, casual carpool, guitar hero, jalapeno potato chips, bicycles, kevlar, velcro, carbon composite, draids, the first half of indiana jones and the temple of doom, seat belts, zippo lighters, spartan laser, heated seats, public libraries, remote control, sorbet

scared single

i stayed up late the other night, watching a scary movie starring ewan mcgregor, patricia arquette and nick nolte in this really bad wig. mcgregor was a law student who worked as a night watchman at a morgue and there was a serial killer on the loose (murdering and maiming women, of course) and the usual array of atmospheric nonsense: disappearing corpses, body parts floating in formaldehyde, and these big disturbing trees encased in flapping black plastic.

if it had been 3 in the afternoon, it wouldn't have affected me at all, but by the time the movie was over it was 3 a.m. and there was a grim february wind beating against the windows and, i have to admit, i got totally creeped out.

or, as i like to call it, scared single.

i ran to my bed, pulled the covers up over my head and lay in the dark trying not to think about those trees or that wig or especially those poor dead women (with no eyes!) stacked like cordwood down at the city morgue. but i still jumped at every creak and groan and slap of rain against the glass, convinced that the killer was outside my apartment door, knife in hand.

only to discover come morning that i'd accidentally left my keys in the lock. i may as well have left a "welcome, murderers!" sign on the door.

now, i've lived alone long enough that i don't normally go the nervous nellie route, unless i've been out ghost hunting or paying too much attention to the news or, as in this case, watching the wrong movie. when you live by yourself, you can't afford to be anxious all the time, otherwise you'll end up with rings under your eyes from lack of sleep or a ring on your finger because you can't stand to sleep alone (i.e., scared married).

for singles, fear is a luxury.

after all, when you find a spider the size of a baseball mitt in your bathtub, you're the one who has to get rid of it (my advice: suck it up -- literally -- with a vacuum cleaner). and when you hear an odd tapping noise on your skylight like some disembodied hand scratching against the glass, it's you who has to inch your way into the spare room to see if you're being terrorized by a crow or the claw.

when you live alone, you're it -- security guard, psychiatrist and soothing bedtime storyteller. sure, you may have company from time to time, but chances are when that fuse blows out in the middle of the night, you're the one who has to slowly descend the basement stairs, just like the doomed heroine in all those bad slasher films.

except most people who live alone have enough sense not to watch that crap (as hard as that may be this time of year), because they know if they do they'll spend the rest of the night peering into closets like some crazed fundamentalist.

not that it's always easy to keep a cool head, especially when there are so many things to be afraid of, some of which may be lurking in your refrigerator (slimy cilantro! moldy cheese! that blue egg!).

slipping and falling in the bathtub has always been high on my list of single-life scares. and my friend carly worries about choking on popcorn while engrossed in a movie. my neighbor mike, on the other hand, says the only thing that scares him is a conservative republican (and, you have to admit, the thought of ann coulter's bony hand shooting out from under the bed to grab your leg is pretty frightening).

to combat the creeps, many singles use protection (no, not that kind). my buddy adin, who lives in a creaky old house, keeps a baseball bat under the bed and a small fan going in the corner of her room, its white noise drowning out the midnight whispers of phantom burglars and bogeymen. another friend, michelle, has a bodyguard (or "buddy" guard), an 80-pound dog with large teeth and a menacing bark.

some singles have found fear to be a boon to their love lives. james, who's now married, says that when he was in the dating game he used to rent horror movies in hopes his dates would be too freaked out to be left alone. but even today, he's not sure who was playing whom.

"it always seemed to work, but i still don't know if it was the scary movie or my charm," he told me. "or if my new lady friend was just using the 'i'm too scared, can you sleep over?' ploy to get me into bed."

being outmaneuvered by a date -- now that's scary!

for the most part, though, i've found that while singles occasionally will get the jitters, it's the folks in relationships who can't take being alone for any length of time.

"it's like every single sound in the house is amplified whenever my wife leaves," one friend explained. "when someone else is here, i can rationalize the noises away, but when i'm alone i find myself checking under the bed every night."

as one who's done her share of bed checks and bathroom night lights and late-night phone calls to friends over the years, i can relate. it's tough wrangling an overactive imagination -- even more so when it's not yours.

"you realize, of course, that the killer could have made a wax impression of your key while it was hanging out there," my friend sara told me the other night over drinks. "which means he'll be able to come into your apartment at any time."

cold comfort for these blustery february nights. slumber party, anyone?

Rozzi Daime on Voting.

So as many of my young friends tend to forget to vote, or don't care to vote, or aren't regestered to vote, or aren't even up on the current issues, and or candidates to vote, I would like to take a moment to remind you all of the history of voting, for just a moment. There was a time when this fine country of ours the U S of A, did not consider black people to be anything other than 1/3 of a human being, thus making it imposible for us to vote. Making it so that the decisions that faced us in our daily lives, and the taxes we still had to pay, were decided by white men. We had no say. When we attempted to speak out, to exercise our freedoms, we were hung, burned, murdered, lynched, dragged, and shot. WAS THAT ALL IN VAIN? My fellow women. We too suffered the injustice of not being smart enough to vote, as it was "man affairs". There was an entire movement based solely on women being able to vote, AND WE STILL EARN LESS MONEY THAN MEN IN THE WORKPLACE. Are you telling me, you wont get out there today and VOTE?!

Make a difference friends, I know in the past it has been discouraging with fixed elections, and the electoral college, and not feeling that your individual vote counted. BUT THATS WHERE YOU ARE WRONG. We must each vote, every last one of us, the only way to make a difference, is to make your vote count. They can not fix a landslide. So be a citizen, Honor your ancestors. Vote.

XOXO

The Daime

here ye here ye!!!!!!!!

"As I look around me, a bright sky I see, and a shadow beside me.
Six more weeks of winter it will be!"

bummer