I have jokingly called Zac “Smiley” since we met. That’s because George Smiley was John Le Carré’s main character and Zac is not in a big three letter, but he works in both military and civilian intelligence roles. I was delighted one day when I said something in voice dictation like, “you’re adorable, Smiley.” Siri wrote:
You’re adorable 😊
So, if I had to pick one out of all, it’s the OG. I was around when it began, and I use/say it almost as much now as then.
I feel like I use emojis the way they were intended, which is to indicate which lines are jokes… not a mode of communication. To me, that is like saying “I need 300 words on my desk by 1500, but make sure it’s in Wingdings.” Therefore, I hardly ever use emoticons that I can’t type.
It’s not fun to me to stop and insert imagery like a web designer. I will add emojis at the end, but only sometimes. Mostly I am concerned about getting you an answer, not picking pictures.
My other top two are a winking face and a smiley with the tongue hanging out because they’re easy to use at 90 wpm. I also try not to use them in every single paragraph. They are decorations, not cake. My feelings may have more to do with the creation of the web not being what maintains it. As in, I may be telling you things that no longer apply. In my background, they were lifelines to ensure that you let someone know your intent in a chat room, because an emoji transcends language. I get that going to pictures is nothing new and hieroglyphics are valid, but that’s not how we did it in the beginning. I’m not advocating we go backwards. I just haven’t had a situation where I needed to stop talking and use emojis instead. It has never come up.
I also don’t expect other people to be writers, so I am not telling you what you should do, either. I am saying that my habits are built from having specifically a desktop since I was eight. It was a different feel not to have the Internet on all the time, like a utility. You might have only been able to chat for a few minutes before someone accidentally picked up the phone. The phone lines carried both data and voice just like the internet does now, but picking up another phone in the house would drop the data connection and you would be “kicked off.” I have to explain this because not all my readers are my age.
I wish I could remember more of those early conversations, because I didn’t realize how quickly my day to day life was changing. My watch has a faster processor now than my desktop had back then.
I have a watch that would have genuinely been helpful at CIA during The Cold War, and I would not doubt that they had something like an Apple Watch long before we did. It’s not because I think there’s a deep state or anything shady. It’s that with all the technology research CIA does, a computer that’s capable of sitting on your wrist like a Pip-Boy can’t be an original idea. Jonna used to take calls from her staff after “Get Smart” and “Dragnet” from officers saying, “can we do that?”
But there’s a second reason, and that’s that during one of Jonna’s talks, she said that they do such specialized things that one person will spend their entire career on one thing, like batteries or cameras. That’s because once an asset got to the place where they were supposed to plant the bug, it had to last a long time, because who knows how long it will be before we can get into that room again? And in fact, she was talking about “The Americans,” the scene where the maid hides the bug in Caspar Weinberger’s clock.
(I thought it was really funny that Ollie North consulted on “The Americans. It’s just the richest ending to that story I could imagine, because it was a major one. I remember it and I couldn’t have been even a teenager yet.)
We, the people of the chatrooms, have conversations exactly like this because we’re always looking for the next new thing, computer-wise. Zac and I have a Chinese Wall on technology, because he knows I’m interested and I’ll ask way more questions than he could possibly answer. The only thing he’ll say is the history of something if it’s UNCLASS. Like, “we have stuff that looks similar.” If he says “looks similar,” that’s kind of my cue to go read a book. 😉
I have never been in a chatroom where we weren’t discussing computers or the chessboard at some point. I have no doubt that I’ve met half of Anonymous by now. I know for certain I’ve met one. I didn’t even have to catch him at anything. He took some Ambien and came to my house because he still couldn’t sleep……… Then I didn’t sleep for three days.
However, he was the kind of hacker you want. Someone who’s a hacktivist on the good guys’ side. White hats do exist.
In all of my years on the Internet, it’s been as nonbinary as everything else about me. I got sucked into the world of hacking, but I don’t hack. It’s kind of the way Lindsay is woven into the queer community in Houston even though she’s cis and straight.
Oh, and I should write this down. “Enby” is short for nonbinary. It’s the gender that most fits me, and yet I don’t care if people think I’m male or female. Pronouns are not about respect to me, because I think it’s more important for me to know who I am than anyone else. Pronouns are a non-issue because I don’t make them one. The easiest thing is just to say “they” if you don’t know, anyway. It’s funny how my gender often depends on how people perceive me, which most of the time is female, but when people don’t look closely, I’m always a “sir.” Neither bother me in the slightest.
(And for the record, if you misgender me, just apologize and move on….. Because you didn’t misgender me and I’m not offended. Plus, I do not need your entire history with trans people as an apology. I’m sure your nephew is great.)
The truth is, though, lots of people on the Internet are nonbinary by now, whether we like it or not. The Internet has changed the rules of the game because you become disconnected from your physical body during emotional intimacy. It’s not that way for everyone, obviously, but it’s a good observation of most. For instance, “straight guys” trolling gay chatrooms because they’re curious and don’t want anyone to know they’re chatting with other queer people at night.
And most of the time, that comes off as rage bait. It’s very popular to come into a gay online community and start asking things like “so which one’s the wife?” And you watch a mix of insults go by because it’s our space.
It is also true that a disproportionately large neurodivergent community exists on the web because we built it. I have always worked with other autistic people without being able to identify it for myself, because I did not know that I was social masking, first of all (in a way that other people don’t), and I also didn’t know that you can have a full range of emotions and pick up all social cues and guess what? That’s not what autism is, either. It’s a criteria, but it’s not all of it.
Being autistic is absolutely why I gravitated toward Linux. It wasn’t to play around with Linux, necessarily. Part of it was learning Linux, and it was exciting because I could do things that very few people my age could do. The better part was a group of people who could understand me in my own language, which for years turned into me being the only woman in many rooms (because that’s mostly how I’ve presented at the office, although we all kind of look nonbinary in Oregon because we’re all wearing the same Columbia jacket we got on sale last summer at REI.
I wouldn’t have learned any of the things I’ve learned about myself without an Internet connection, because I didn’t have many queer friends growing up locally in Texas, but I had a ton of them in Australia.
So, I suppose the easiest way to say it is something you’ve heard all your life, so I hope it makes sense.
People who have known me my whole life have seen me in makeup and heels, with curled bangs and either waved or crimped hair (really). My hair is very thick and stick straight. Without a waver, I would have had no body in my hair at all. Now, I keep it short so I don’t have to worry about “body” to make it look good. So, you see, my hair has never been a part of my feminine identity. I just wanted to wear what A) I thought looked good B) fit into the category of not really showing my body in any way.
I am not a prude, I am autistic and want cloth to make me feel secure and help me move better (my cerebral palsy/hypotonia/lack of 3D vision are also tied to autism). Therefore, I am usually wearing trousers as opposed to shorts, and if I’m not wearing a long sleeved shirt, it has to get really damn hot before I’ll even think of taking off my hoodie.
Bryn and Dave coming to visit is a perfect example. Since we’ll be going to museums, that means jeans and a t-shirt with a hoodie or a jacket. That’s because it might be cool outside, but it will definitely be cold in the air conditioning. They want to go to SPY, and when Bryn told me that, I said, “the SPY museum? I’m not familiar.” For new readers, they should just count out the middle man and give me an apartment out back.
The last time I went, I got a long-sleeved boys’ t-shirt (size large fits so perfectly on me because the shoulders look tailored to my frame and the sleeves don’t go over my hands). It’s navy and has three stripes across the front with a spy in a hat carrying a briefcase is running through it, as well as International Spy Museum stacked on the stripes. It’s one of the coolest shirts I’ve ever seen, and says “Washington, DC” down the sleeve. The only thing it doesn’t have is the official logo of the museum on the sleeve, and personally, that’s what makes it for me.
When I first moved here, the spy museum was on F Street (now it’s at L’Enfant Plaza) and I loved it because of the Shake Shack across the street. It was also more intimate.
Here’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to me at the museum which makes for hilarity later:
So, at the Spy Museum, the introduction has changed. On F Street, you walked in and there were plaques with all these different covers on them. You had to choose one and use it throughout the whole walkthrough. What they did not say is that it is sort of a computer based training sort of thing, where you have to remember the details of what you’ve heard and answer questions about them.
I’m lightly panicking because I am only a tiny bit known for my acting ability and I wouldn’t know the first thing about magic (that’s how Tony and Jonna pulled off their tricks- using the same concept as you would use on stage, and in an intelligence officer’s case, their stage is their area of operations).
I decide that because of my frame, my best shot at this is an 18-year-old male from Britain called Colin.
So there I am, walking around like a jackass…… I’m trying to figure out an accent, mannerisms, walk, the whole nine yards.
Then, I got inside the museum and therefore the first computer, and I nearly fell on the floor laughing.
That was the day I bought a t-shirt that said “Argo @#$% Yourself” in black with the museum logo on the sleeve. Then, years later, I got a picture of him wearing the same shirt from Jonna and it made my year because he’d already passed and I wondered if he even knew about them.
Later, I learned that he and Jonna were on the board of the museum, so I’m pretty sure he knew about them.
God, I hope that they make more Mendez movies. I would love for Hollywood to make a mashup of “The Moscow Rules” and “In True Face.” That’s because since “Argo” won best picture, that story has already been told. The ones during The Cold War have not. I assume that Hollywood will get it together.
Rule #1
Assume nothing.
Rule following gets you nowhere in my line of work. In the world of “go big or go home,” this is the only place I feel truly comfortable doing so, because it’s such a part of me. I’m not very physically capable, but I can throw together a sentence or two. I love that other people love my candor and honesty because it shows me every day that I do not have to please anyone. People will show up every day to hear what I say no matter what it is.
That being said, they will always have to come to me. I am not Shonda Rimes.
:::stares in Grey’s Anatomy:::
“It’s an American tendency to ruin things a little bit so we can have more of it.” -The Good Place re: ice cream vs. frozen yogurt
I am strong enough to take massive criticism by ignoring it. That’s because for every person that says my writing is terrible, there’s one who thinks I’m the best blogger they’ve ever read. Or, in this day and age, they think long form Internet posts are new because they’re too young to remember 2001, which is when I started my old blog, “Clever Title Goes Here.” I sometimes wonder if I’d have done better staying under the same name, but now that it’s been 12 or 13 years since I tanked Clever Title at my own hand, I’ve gotten back any potential “customers” I lost. My web stats aren’t enormous, but they aren’t small, either. I have to compare my audience to congregation size, because then a small number of people looks ENORMOUS.
Today, I had web stats on my post a minute and a half after I published it, and a like three and a half minutes later. That means someone is reading me AS SOON as the entry comes out. And then, my watch buzzes all afternoon because JetPack doesn’t tell you every time someone visits, but every time someone notices you inside the WordPress community. Therefore, an astounding number of my readers are people who are writers just like me.
Including, apparently, my boyfriend….. Who didn’t tell me he had a blog until we’d been dating a year. A year. A YEAR, people. It’s been the most helpful thing I’ve ever experienced, being written about rather than writing about someone else. I don’t have to cut off any one of my limbs to see Zac’s blog entries about me, he’ll link to me and I’ll get what’s called a “ping back.”
Because I got a ping back instead of a note from Zac that he’d answered my daily prompt entries with one of his own, I thought I was meeting this great new local blogger, and my friends will think I had as big a “dumbass attack” as I actually did when I didn’t know his userid….. MrWould.
Speaking of which, Zac is not a super fan. He surfs and reads me occasionally, but we don’t obsessively read each other’s writing. It feeds me because I actually get to tell him about my life and add more detail than I can here because we have more modes of communication- like talking. Sometimes I forget that I actually do need to see people’s eyes… Or in the case of a video chat, their legs. 😉 If you haven’t seen them stand up in three years, it’s been too long since you’ve seen ’em.
There’s a lot to be said in a hug that can’t be voiced, and I need to remember it. Keep it. Write it down.
I just did, but I hear a particular voice in my head when I type it. Supergrover and I have a favorite “influencer” on Instagram, so when I heard the voice in my head, I thought of SG! and laughed.
Ah, where were we? (When I think of her personality, I go a little starry-eyed…..)
My audience size is not influencer size, but that has less to do with my talent and more to do with the fact that less people are willing to read long entries at all. I had a guy in r/washingtondc ask me “do people still have blogs?” This is why Jaz called me “prehistoric,” I guess.
I am, however, known. People who have much stronger voices than me have liked things I said. My favorite so far has been “Picoult, that line slayed. I’m stealing it.” The heart was worth its weight in gold, because she was my mother’s favorite author in the whole entire world.
We were also both watching the first trans woman we’d ever seen on Oprah Winfrey, and I told her she hadn’t aged a day since then (I think her autobiography was published in either the late 90s or early 200s) and what was her secret? She said, “moisturize.”
That trans woman was Jennifer Finney Boyle, co=author with Jodie Picoult on the novel “Mad Honey.”
I’ve met Anne Lamott, David Sedaris, and Jonna Mendez. Therefore, I have met my top three favorite authors so far, and I hope to continue meeting them as I acquire good books. There are some I need to get on it faster than others………. I learned that lesson hardcore when I got to DC just as Tony Mendez stopped doing public appearances because of the Parkinson’s. I missed him by mere months.
There are just so many reasons I wish both Dana and I had been here before 2015. That being said, I would not have wanted to wait any longer to see that we were capable of physical violence when we were both melting down, because then I could say honestly that we were not good for each other without putting blame on either one of us. Neither one of us are all bad or all good. There had been a storm brewing for quite some time at that point, and I believe that the only reason we didn’t survive is that we didn’t listen to ourselves whisper, so we listened to ourselves scream.
If you ignore a problem, you think it goes away and it doesn’t. It accrues interest in a bank account you can’t access because you won’t. No one wants to go through the pain of introspection- not even me. It is truly a feeling of “Feel the Fear, and Do It, Anyway” (Susan Jeffers’ groundbreaking book). This is because the more I explore the internal mechanisms of my brain, the more I feel comfortable in my own skin. My bullshit detector has grown in full force, because I have found my own north star and internal compass. Sometimes, it’s devastatingly wrong, but it’s still my compass as opposed to trying to earn someone else’s or give mine away.
My goal is a movie deal based on my novel, and I think I can pull it off if I work very hard. But it is not time for writing fiction yet in terms of a work in progress. That is because I don’t have all the main story points worked out. I don’t have to work out highlights, but transitions. Where the peaks and valleys are, because I’m writing about war. I have to learn the ins and outs of what means victory and what means defeat. That’s because I don’t know whether the book will end with an L or a W. For instance, a country that wins a war but is bombed within every square inch doesn’t feel like a win to them once the real work of rebuilding sets in. Yet no one ever seems to remember how much work goes into rebuilding something and think, “maybe we shouldn’t blow things up.” I know that war is diplomacy through other means, but it seems like people could try a little harder than “obviously, we cannot reach a conclusion so let’s just start killing each other; whoever gets the most shots in is the winter.”
We can’t all be Elizabeth McCord.
So, in my quest for world peace, I am also thinking about scaling. I cannot go from not knowing how to write fiction at all to producing a book quickly. I am soaking up master classes from everyone I can find. Brandon Sanderson put his whole semester of “Intro to Science Fiction” at BYU on YouTube. There are lots of others, but so far, this playlist is my favorite.
Brandon actually says in the first lecture that this is not just for science fiction writers. He’s going to throw everything at us and we can take it or leave it, from plot, setting, and character to getting it sold.
Zac is also a good resource in this because he submits fiction to contests. On one of them, I was in the writer’s room. “We” got some good feedback. I didn’t help write the whole story, but offered suggestions he took and it made me feel like a million dollars.
I am so rich you wouldn’t believe it if words of assurance could be legal tender. I have so many friends across the world……………….
And also you. 😂😂😂
Kidding, kidding.
This has been a marvelous tangent (realizing what irritates me about Tolkien- I am in this picture and I do not like it. #unsubscribe #block #report), The point was supposed to be about my being nonbinary, and I went from clothes into sensory issues to God knows what and here we are, back at the place where we started.
I wear boys’ clothes, yet comfortable with my femininity. People have expressed this to me in a variety of ways, most of them unprintable. A taste of this would be “you look like a boy, but you….” I’ll let your mind finish that sentence because this is not a family show and you know that already.
My point is that when I started really trying to examine my gender, I realized I saw it on me, but not within me. That how much of each gender I feel might show up in my clothes, accessories, etc. but I have no official attachment to either.
I am very aware that I sound male on the Internet and I use it effectively by saying things a woman would say “in a man’s voice” online. More men pay attention to me that way, and I do not mean that I am inviting male attention. I mean that I have both sets of social masking and I flip from one to the other depending on who is with me. When I am alone, I am stereotypically male. You can see it in my tone even in this entry. My brain is mostly male. I just don’t have any attachment to the male or female body, which is why I am not trans or cis. I feel like it’s a good place to be, because if I had to have a double mastectomy, I would be relieved. All of the sudden, my shirts would hang right. I don’t mean I am unhappy in my body, I am saying that it doesn’t matter what gender I look like because it’s not really a part of my reality.
So much of gender expression is automated by society…. But do people really sit there and think about the fact that they’re cis all the time? I would think it wouldn’t come up unless it was a question people genuinely needed to ask themselves. What cis people don’t understand is that they don’t have to understand. They just have to treat nonbinary and trans as a non-issue. As a redditor posted, “I don’t know French, either, but I respect it exists.” Just because you don’t know something doesn’t make it invalid. The people making it invalid are people who don’t know Jack or shit about gender because they never had to doubt it.
I know I sound like every computer geek who’s ever lived….. And most of them are male. Therefore, I have social masked men my entire career. I also like the Texas old guy patois, and I slip into it easily online because I slip into that patois when I’m not speaking vocally.
I don’t like my voice, so therefore I don’t phrase things like a woman very often. For some reason, hearing the pitch of my own voice makes me act more like a woman than I feel in my head.
Social masking.
My voice is also higher in a recording than I would like it to be, and eschew that, too…… Unless the notes are already high and I need the help.
It always sounds better in the room than on a recording when I sing, because when I’m on a recording, you’re not taking in my emotions. I have a lot of emotions, even in Latin.
I actively run away from my voice because it’s a trap. I don’t sound the way I want to sound, and I don’t want to lose my top range, either. I often think I would think about my childhood a lot less if my voice was deeper, and only the people that were there would understand that tone matters, that dropping an octave makes the note feel so much further away…. Not so extremely loud and incredibly close.
I need a breath after that paragraph.
In this case, it actually would help to be able to cry out from the deep instead of the waves. I got very, very, very lucky that the chord ever resolved at all. Otherwise, I would have been a lovesick teenager chasing after someone who didn’t want me.
Which is what I think about, when it’s just me and the boys.
Despite my best intentions, today may be a “show about nothing.” That’s basically all I know about Seinfeld because I wasn’t a fan back in the day. I don’t remember a lot of what I watched in high school except “Animaniacs” and “Jeopardy!” At that age, I was usually sitting on the floor of my bedroom with my headphones on trying to be Miles Davis. I assure you that I always thought I sounded better when I was alone, because I wasn’t focusing on pleasing the crowd and making a show go well.
I do remember the highlights. I was more happy that I impressed Doc than impressing a crowd, because I did a solo in “Come Rain or Come Shine” and Doc’s response was “Leslie Lanagan! 9th Grade, ladies and gentlemen. NINTH GRADE.” I was also the soloist on a local Houston TV show called “Black Voices” (yes. Really. But it wasn’t because Summer Jazz Workshop was all white. It’s because I beat out everyone else. I got that solo from Konrad Johnson, director of one of the most famous jazz bands in the nation- Kashmere High School. I’ve mentioned this before, but Kashmere got a chart on the soundtrack to “Baby Driver,” and Konrad, who has now passed, is memorialized in a bigger way than just locally in Houston.
When a black jazz director picks the white boy for a solo on a television show called “Black Voices,” it means the fucking world. I have rarely felt more “I’m on top of the world” than that. It’s also really funny in retrospect.
If I had to describe my sound, it’s very much like Wynton Marsalis. This is because he’s who I studied the most closely to learn both jazz and classical. Let me tell you about the time I met Wynton. I walked right up to him and said, “Wynton, I’ve waited my whole life to meet you.” It’s funny because I was 15 and also true. I’ve been listening to Wynton since I was in the womb because my dad is also a trumpet player. You can see him most weeks on the Second Baptist broadcast in Houston, or streaming over the Internet.
My dad’s claim to fame is that when he was in high school, he went to the 50 yard line and played “The Star Strangled Banana” all by himself instead of having a singer and accompaniment. I have no doubt that it was absolutely gorgeous, because I inherited his “elements of style.”
Speaking of which, a bookstore worker was talking on Reddit about how this person came in and said she needed a book for her daughter, who was a writer. It was by “shrunken white,” and EVERYONE was confused. But what writer wouldn’t have known it from “shrunken white?”
(It’s “Elements of Style,” by Strunk & White.)
If I have any advice to give writers (because I’ve done it so many years, not because I think I’m “all that and a bag of chips”), it’s write where you feel the most comfortable. Sometimes, it’s at my desk. Sometimes, it’s under the covers.
Write where you feel the absolute least threatened, because your emotions will flow through you a lot easier that way. You’re still writing about your own head when you’re in fiction mode. It’s just expressed as your characters.
That’s because we’re making it up as we go along, hoping you’ll track with us. Even if you’re an architect to plans in advance, that’s no guarantee that people will track with you. It’s your system, not theirs. I am not an architect. I’m a gardener. I start at one place and dig down. Otherwise, it’s not my diary.
It’s trying to impress the crowd, and this time, I don’t want to do that. I want to move and challenge people so that they’ll come along with me and not the other way around. The right people will gravitate, and whether that’s a hundred or 10 million is of no consequence to me because I’m obviously going to write whether people think it’s worthy of money or not. I don’t have to be validated by anyone else. I have received enough praise and been compared to enough people better than me that I feel solid. I don’t have to worry that I’m so far not successful because of lack of talent. If Margaret Cho and Jonna Mendez both think I can write my ass off, then I fucking can.
So, I don’t have to believe the people who say I’m a hack anymore.
In terms of writers to whom I’ve been compared, I get David Sedaris the most frequently. I can be as funny as he is, but I’m not. We don’t often share the same goal, which is to make people laugh outright. Mostly, I can’t because I don’t feel like it. When I’m not feeling funny, I’m not.
And that’s why people come here- to see both the good and the bad- not because mine is better than anyone else’s, but that mine exists over people who aren’t writers. There are lots of people with web sites that don’t actually say anything. I don’t want mine to be one of them.
I would be a powerful speaker in public if I liked my voice, because I have been told I already am a powerful speaker in public. I know this solidly because I have preached sermons multiple times that have been well received. You don’t graduate from being a preacher’s kid without having picked up some tricks over the years. Just because I’m not a minister doesn’t mean I don’t have that patois when I’m writing or in front of a crowd.
I don’t have to believe the people who say I’m not a good preacher.
My grandfather always said “write it tight” because he was a publicity man for Lone Star Steel. He actually learned the same type photography as Jonna Mendez, basically hanging out of an airplane to take overhead photos. It’s interesting to me that she was a spy and he was publicity and yet they learned the same tricks.
In terms of writing it tight, I do in certain sentences because it fits a mood. That mood is the one I’m in at the moment. I am INFJ, neurodivergent, nonbinary, queer, poly, etc. Therefore, I have never made a decision on what kind of person I am in my life.
“The Counselor” personality is a thousand years old when it is born. We are born with a desperate need to search inside ourselves for answers, because we have an absolute neediness when it comes to wanting to improve the world. We need to feel wanted and valued, but the way we do that is by trying to lead people by laying out our vulnerabilities first. It is not a narcissistic game, but a realistic understanding of what it will take to create connection and resolution vs. power over.
My personality is enormous in the smallest of ways. I don’t approach this blog like I’m a god, but that I am whispering into the night and hoping it resonates with other people. This is true among people who do not know me, but is not true among people who know me.
Therefore, I feel like I know Jesus on a deep and spiritual level, and anything written to amplify his life into being divine is not the message and never should have been in the first place.
Sticky, sticky blood theology bothers the everliving shit out of me. That’s because it’s focusing on what I believe was a marketing campaign to spread his story. That I don’t have to have mystery and magic to think that the historical Jesus is valuable and actually taught people things to which they should pay attention. Our entire religion backfired during The Crusades because supposedly religious superiority launched war off a nomadic preacher who taught people to love each other.
Again, it’s the strangest transformation in history.
The first mistake was turning Jesus from a brown person into a white person, and blaming Jews for the crucifixion and not the Romans. He was a destitute homeless person, basically. But he did it by choice.
I do not understand people who trade his supposed glory for what he was actually trying to say– to you and to all the other people in history who have colonized others. My favorite line in The Gospels is “render unto Caesar what it Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s.” This is because it’s like he’s telling power to its face “you do you, but okay.”
It’s the messages they’ve missed in the middle of the mess. And I am so tired. Evangelicals are exhausting because they treat Jesus like this professional Christian superhero when he was basically thrown away like white people have thrown away black people for hundreds of years.
There is no reason for this foolishness…. And yet, they persist.
Focusing on the resurrection is not about any of that. It’s being willing to believe that if you will be forgiven for your mistakes, it means you’re allowed to make them. It does not mean you don’t have to say you’re sorry….. And that’s the kind of Christianity that’s woven into the Republican Party.
Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.
Apparently, if I had just waited until today, the perfect story and the perfect prompt would have lined up. I wrote about a very meaningful encounter with an American Uber driver who was from Afghanistan originally. It always hurts when you can’t make them line up if you’ve published a story that would have been good for the prompt, like, less than 24 hours ago. That being said, I cannot answer all of the prompts because I’ve already answered them. This is either one in which I still have the post in my draft folder, or I took off that day. A large percentage of my readers come from the daily prompt, because people’s answers are highlighted and moved up. That’s how my audience grows every single day.
I am growing most rapidly in India, and honestly I think that’s because WordPress is more popular in India. There’s also not really a language barrier because my Indian housemate and her daughter were both taught English in school. Plus, Indians and I are the same tribe. We’ve been supporting Windows users since we were kids. 😉 I do not know what it is about my personality that attracts Indians, or people from any other country, really. I do consciously think about the fact that I’m writing for an international audience, though.
That’s why so many of my illustrations come from the Bible and Doctor Who. Jesus and The Doctor are two of the most recognizable figures in the world and not just to Americans. I am definitely a Christian and a Whovian, but it’s more than that. Both the Bible and Doctor Who give me an endless library of images with which to explain things to people who have also read/seen these things. There are not many things I can talk about to an audience that read global.
It is also why I talk about intelligence so much. Intelligence feeds my writing because it shows that I am an American, but I am not American-centric. I believe that we are allowed to work in our best interests, but none of this over the top “America is right about everything and other countries are stupid” bullshit. We could learn so much. We just haven’t, and won’t. We’re not smart enough to be humble and admit when things aren’t working and say, “hey. France has a good idea on this. Maybe we should take a look at it.” Substitute any country in the world for France, because there can be good things found in any government right along with the bad.
In short, I want to show more people than just Americans that I hear them, that their stories do matter to me, that I am not an American imperialist but a seeker of knowledge. For instance, Argo is my favorite movie. But when I really get down to brass tacks, can I really say to myself that the US was right to do what they did? I do not want to exclude Iranians and their story by invalidating their feelings and their history. I love that the movie starts out by saying that the Iranians were angry, and the way the voiceover plays out, you hear the anguish in the struggle. I rooted for Tony and the houseguests. I did not judge whether the United States was wrong or right for putting themselves in that situation in the first place. It is too complicated for me to comprehend, because I was not an adult at the time. I was two.
I am a student of the chessboard without assuming that the United States will or should win every game.
For instance, people have thought I was crazy for saying I’d like to retire in Mexico (not likely, but an interesting thought) because of all the drug cartels. I said, “well, if I get hurt by one of the cartels, at least I won’t be in debt up to my eyeballs.” We would be happier with socialized medicine, but most people (even those on Medicare) don’t support it because they don’t understand it. Think about all the school shootings, all the public events that have been ruined by gunfire, and the tremendous amount of money those people had to pay to recover from the privilege of being shot.
People say “if you don’t like it, just leave.” If I leave, there will be no one to vote for these things. Telling me to get out is so much easier than working with me to find a solution, my problem with that mentality in its entirety, and most of what I hate about Republicans and have since the 90s.
Republicans don’t do solutions. They didn’t like The New Deal any better than they liked Obamacare. This has become a pattern. They’re fine with just sitting back and saying no to everything while problems persist- while also not coming up with anything and being angry that Democrats get credit for cool things and they don’t.
For instance, Mitt Romney could have taken on nationalized health care as easily as any Democrat, but he didn’t win the presidency, first of all, and if he’d told the Republican party he planned to overhaul national health care the way he did in Massachusetts, he never would have been the candidate in the first place. This is why they can’t have nice things.
Hillary Clinton started fighting the Republicans on health care in the 90s, when Bill took office…. and it took until Obama to get even the barest minimum. It’s not a complete overhaul, but it’s a start. I have no doubt that’s one of the reasons why Michelle Obama’s focus was on preventative care and not trying to take on legislation like the “Patient’s Bill of Rights.” She focused on diet and exercise, which is the best you can do without medical or legal intervention.
The Republicans aren’t the idea machine, but it’s not because they can’t be. It’s because they won’t. It’s their personality now. All they do is try to stop the Democrats, they don’t try to come up with ideas that will work better. They don’t collaborate with Democrats, so there’s no Republican buy-in to basically anything that represents moving forward.
We are not the same country that we were under Eisenhower, and Eisenhower would not understand the current Republican party any more than I do, because our thinking is very much the same. The GOP has gotten more and more conservative, which has made the Democrats more conservative in order to be electable. What people think of in America as “liberal” is very conservative in the rest of the world.
Very. Conservative.
That’s why it’s hard to see that Donald Trump is a fascist for some people. They do not realize that we were already so tilted to the right in the first place. That fascism wasn’t a huge leap because we’d been sliding toward it so long. It is astounding to me the number of Americans who think Trump is perfectly capable of being president from prison. I am not kidding. There have been polls.
Joe Biden isn’t as liberal as you think he is. He’s not even the most liberal person in our party. In terms of world leaders, he’s very conservative, because the other leaders in the world do have socialized medicine in their countries (the major players). It is impossible to say that conservatives in other countries are equal to our own….. A good for-instance would be comparing Republicans to Tories. When Tories get angry, they don’t try to defund the NHS and take away gay marriage.
I will say that the United States has a history of crazy in the political arena. It is only relatively recently that we stopped rolling our eyeballs at that level of insanity and electing it instead.
Now it’s time for me to go put together my desk chair, because now that I have a really comfortable one, I’m going to be in it all day long. That’s because I put my desk at the foot of my bed so that when I’m writing, I can turn my head to look out onto the greenery and the trees. So much of writing is turning your head to look at the trees.
It’s nice, because I’m normally looking at the whole forest.
I had one of the strangest, most moving experiences I’ve ever had with a person just because he was my Uber driver, and I was wearing a baseball cap. If you’re a fan, you already know what it says, and your heart is probably beating a little faster now that you’ve read the title.
I have told you that I am the kind of person that people get deep with, fast. I hear a lot of “I’ve never told anyone this before.” People spill information to me that they would never tell anyone else. And in fact, I’ve been sitting on this story for about a week because I had to feel it completely before I could describe it.
I was using Uber Share, so I ended up in the front seat. I got dropped off last, so we had plenty of time to talk. I asked the driver where he was from. He said, almost too quietly, “Afghanistan.” Because of his demeanor, I thought, “oh, Allah. Here we go.” I walked right into it, because when people say “Afghanistan” quietly, there’s a story there. I knew it was going to be large, and it was going to hurt. However, I did not know in advance that it wouldn’t hurt because I’ve wanted to meet someone like him for a very long time. It was a blessing from Allah for both of us, reciprocal in nature…… Like slicing over a wound until he touched my arm.
He was a cleaner in the Afghan government somewhere, and we asked him to work for us. Then, we got him out when shit hit the fan. He knew he wanted to come here, and that’s why he agreed to work for the letters stuck semi permanently on my head…… The OG have seen it coming.
C
I
A
They’re my three favorite letters in the whole world because of three people. The first and second are Jonna and Tony Mendez. The third is Anthony Bourdain, who is a double dipper because he loved spies with every fiber of his being, and he also went to Culinary Institute of America.
One of these days, one of Zac’s friends who is “recovering CIA” will cook with me….. And I will get my moment.
“Didn’t they teach you ANYTHING?”
So, this man (a boy in my eyes) weaves a tale that has me so mesmerized I don’t even notice when we arrive at my house, nor do I want to get out of the car. Not really.
He left everything just for the American dream. Happier than he was in Afghanistan, but devastatingly homesick and can’t go back. Family still there that he won’t see for years, if ever.
It’s a lot.
People who sacrifice for America aren’t just Americans.
He started to cry as he was telling me how much he missed the land, more so when he told me about his family.
The reason I didn’t want to get out of the car is that I was crying, too.
When you are voting on immigration, think of people like him and not the pictures of immigrants that politicians try to make without reading any actual data. There is no doubt that once he was recruited, he could have died for our country and not his own. That’s how badly people want to come here. It’s people who believe in us more than we believe in ourselves….. Because we’ve created a pyrite dream all over the world, where the riches promised are left to the imagination…. Harder when that reality really sets in.
I do think that ultimately it was worth it, because even he agrees. That’s what matters. And an Uber driver in the United States probably makes the same as a cleaner in Afghanistan due to the value of each currency. It is not like he had to come here and discover all of his certifications were worthless. However, I do understand the feeling of exile. I had so many rights in Oregon that I lost when I moved to Texas. That’s because gay marriage didn’t come along until 2008 federally. So, even though we were a married couple in Oregon, we weren’t in Texas. It is a different feeling when you don’t want to go back than when you can’t.
He healed more things in me than he’ll ever know, and I hope that unburdening himself made him feel lighter as well.
Now I can say quite literally that CIA has given me some of the best moments of my life- meeting the Chief of Disguise, and now the type of people we need to collect information in the first place.
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
I’m really sorry, China. I just don’t want to control my mouth to that degree. I like the freedom to say what I want, and I cannot fathom a world in which I wouldn’t say something that pissed off the Chinese government. I am not saying that it is not beautiful, or that the people aren’t wonderful. I am saying that I have a habit of writing checks with my mouth that my ass can’t cash now, so why would I invite China to be able to imprison me?
It’s not that I don’t want to see the land, meet the people, eat the food, and experience the culture. There is nothing wrong with China in terms of any of these things. I do not ever want to put myself in the position of having to answer to a totalitarian government. I am dangerous when I am interested in international affairs, anyway. I talk so much shit about China that if there is a three letter agency watching me through my microwave, I should be fucking grateful. If China is in the room, I want my people in there, too. However, I draw the line at talking smack about China on my web site and then having to ask my government to come rescue my dumb ass, because how in the world did I not know my blog could get me in trouble? Come on, now.
This was driven home to me when one of my favorite YouTubers was ridden out of China on a rail. The next step was jail. He escaped to Hong Kong, then to the US. It was a nightmare. Just because I make videos in people’s minds doesn’t make me different from him. It makes me easy to document, because the document is right here. They could literally put me in jail with copy and paste.
I am not letting them CTRL-C and CTRL-V my life. And if there was no NSA, there would not be Americans also monitoring my criticism of them to make sure it falls under the first Amendment. I can be protected from here. I cannot be protected outside the United States if I have broken a law here, but I would certainly be rescued if I broke a law in China. That’s why CIA is allowed to do what they do. We don’t punish them for breaking laws in other countries. We punish them for breaking laws in ours. If you’re a CIA operative breaking American laws, you will be tried. The FBI will celebrate their victory with relish. There’s too much fire in the belly after people like Aldrich Aames and Robert Hanssen. They will go Chuck Norris on you in a heartbeat. Good luck. God bless.
Therefore, the same rule applies to Americans who break other countries laws without breaking any of ours. For instance, the kids who wandered over the border into North Korea. Clinton got them out through diplomacy, but there are many other stories that don’t make the news because in order to get them out of the country, there has to be an ex-fil and talking about it in the press would give the enemy too much information for the operation to be a success.
CIA gets a bad rap, and I am not here to tell you it is undeserved. But, I am here to tell you that if you’re fucked overseas, they’re the only friends you’ve got. Get on board or stay where you are. Your choice.
I bet in those situations, it’s pretty fucking easy, don’t you think?
So, if worse turned to worst, I’d be grateful. But, I feel like I should just be smart, and save the government taxpayer dollars and legwork.
I gave my Facebook subscribers the inside story, before the video came out. Now, the video is up and I was right…. so you get to hear the real story, too. I am not sure why the Q&A was cut off, but I have two very good guesses….. Jonna & Leslie.
So, I feel like I started it by saying that in another video, I’d heard she was “a real hardass” at CIA. It’s like I broke the surface tension on top of a glass of cool water…… because later on, she talked about a young female colleague who got tired of her boss’s bullshit and said, “Bill, fuck off.”
I laughed a lot harder than I needed to at that joke.
Anyway, we reverted into line cook and spy, which both speak profanity and irreverence as a first language. The black humor on “Homeland” is very real. Lives are on the line, and you sure as shit want to know who’s on your six. If you’re going to step in front of a bus for them, you have to know they’d do the same for you. People think of the military as being rough and tumble, but I’ve been around enough spies by now to know that they mostly run on coffee and hatred. Hearing Zac’s friends’ old war stories was great, because you learn quickly that it’s like being a goalie. You have those Bond moments, but you’re still a government wonk that does paperwork, mostly getting your raw data to the analysts.
Though CIA does not normally carry guns when they’re on intelligence missions, they do when they’re embedded in the armed services. I mean, they’d probably normally carry guns if they were DIA, but people like Jonna usually didn’t, though she’s trained on just about everything. So- note to self. That’s why spies can pick up most guns and know how to use them instantly. They don’t have to carry, they can pick up someone else’s if they’re in trouble.
So, the movies aren’t all bad. Except for this one….. where I got Jonna Mendez censored at her own museum……..
Even though this event was all about Jonna, I can’t think of anything to say except “Argo fuck yourself.” Because what do you say when you notice the other museum employees about to swallow their teeth because they’re so shocked that someone like Jonna would throw an f-bomb. What does she have to prove anymore?
What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?
I have seen “Space Camp” at least 25 times since it came out. I was in love with both the camp itself AND Leah Thompson/Kate Capshaw. I don’t want to be an astronaut anymore, but I do still love women. Therefore, at least one lesson took. It is important to learn everything you do not want in adulthood as it is what you do.
Two or three years after “Space Camp” came out, I went to a science and math magnet in Houston called “Clifton Middle School.” I’ve actually spent time at NASA on more than a field trip. I was intimidated by science, fascinated by the way people have to teamwork up there. It’s all creativity whether or not you started with creativity in your wheelhouse or not.
Music gets under my skin faster than television, so I have not watched all of “Westworld” or “The Good Fight,” but I’ve listened to the themes on YouTube for days at a time. I feel that way about a lot of television themes. I have never seen Peter Gunn, but I have blasted the music at top volume screaming down 95. It’s especially fun hearing the vamp and inserting your own rendition of “Dope Nose” by Weezer.
I have seen “Argo” more than 25 times, but the difference between it and “Space Camp” is that by now, “Argo” lives in my brain and I can quote from it at will. The only lines I don’t know are in Farsi, but I still do the sounds and the hand motions. 😉 If someone starts a line from the dialogue, I can finish it. There aren’t any YouTube videos or articles I can stomach called “Things Even Real Fans Don’t Know About Argo,” because I could have made a better one and I know it. If that sounds too confident/arrogant of me, Jonna Mendez knows who I am, and Tony would have had I met him before he stopped doing public appearances (he once taught an entire room of people at The International Spy Museum how to forge Putin’s signature). It’s not Jonna’s story, but she did help write the book with Tony after the movie came out because there was such a demand for it. I knew that she was an uncredited writer on it, so I think she was surprised/pleased that I asked her to autograph my copy. So, my copy of “Argo” is unique, because it has both their signatures on it….. if I can track down Matt Baglio, I’ll have him sign it, too, because he’s the person that’s helped both of them on all their books. I think we’re friends on Twitter? I don’t know. Jonna hasn’t said where he lives, so I don’t know if he’s local or if they work together electronically.
For instance, I’ll bet you didn’t know that if you watch the busy airport scenes in Argo, Jonna and the kids are in it.
I told you I could make a better video. 😉
In terms of TV series(es), I do not have HBO. But if I did, my two comfort shows there are “Six Feet Under” and “Homeland.”
I was so shocked by the end of Homeland that I felt like someone shot me. My nerve endings just all went to shit. Now that the show is so old, I’ll just spoil it so I can tell you what I didn’t like about it.
Carrie was a bipolar mastermind working on the side of the United States. THEY FUCKED WITH THE FORMULA. She could always pull it out in the end. She could always make things go her way. And then all of the sudden she started working for Russia? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE. Yes, I realized she replaced our Russian asset there, but that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. You don’t get to betray the US and then get a “get out of jail free” card after you’ve already screwed us to the wall. Saul’s face looked like he was pleased at the end. Why he didn’t burn that bridge is beyond me.
She self-destructed and shouldn’t have had any friends at the agency left. The great part about the show was seeing a bipolar person doing the work of five case officers because she could think outside the box. The ending was a shitshow and I will hate it forever because it just shows that CIA was right all along not to trust her, and it adds to the exact stigma that the show was trying to erase.
“Six Feet Under” still resonates with me because my family worked a little bit like a family who runs a funeral home (I was a United Methodist preacher’s kid). I remember talking with my friend Meg about this, because she grew up in a house with a funeral home like the Fishers and our lives were not dissimilar. It’s also my “Lindsay” show, the one thing that both of us are always in the mood to watch.
As she says, “Leslie, you’re David. I’m Claire……. and there’s a little bit of Nate in everybody.”
I have found over time that I’m actually more like Keith, uptight like a cop and also rushing in to take care of everyone. It’s an accurate description of INFJ/Autistic, physically reacting at people breaking the rules and holding taking care of people above all of them.
Wait. I have to say that to myself again. I think it’s one of the biggest truth bombs I’ve ever uncovered about myself:
I’m physically reacting to people breaking the rules, and holding taking care of people above all of them.
In order for me to love people the way they need to be loved, I have to keep my autism at bay. I have to keep physically reacting to other people’s problems the way I do my own. I physically reacted to one of Supergrover’s issues so hard that she thinks I’m out to get her, when I’m actually empathizing with her. I don’t know what I did to give her the message that what she told me was bad. She’s been having a fight with me that is in her own head, really, because she thinks I want to make her feel guilty when I am telling her the reality of how her behavior affects me….. and that we should talk about it.
She starts from the position that I’m out to get her, which means she won’t open up. That causes me physical pain, because I know that what she thinks is not true, and I cannot fix her problem for her. She accused me of wanting to rush in and fix everything in someone else’s life, when that is exactly what we both want to do to our friends because we’re both big sisters. She just does not like being the younger one. At all. In any way. That means she’s blind to the fact that I’m doing the same thing to her all the time that she does for everyone else. She thinks I’m out to get her while I’m trying to do the same thing for her that I do for all the people I consider brothers and sisters. It’s a fundamental breakdown in communication, the can we’ve been kicking.
Media helps me to understand all of this, but I learn about emotions through intelligence movies and TV better than anything else because they’re procedural, even if the procedure is completely made up. I can also tell you the exact moment I switched procedurals in college. I used to like detective shows, and then there was “Alias.”
I’ve watched “Alias” many, many times. I still return to it when I want to be with those characters- something about it won’t let go of you. Jennifer Garner is so cute, the perfect balance of sweet and “I can kill you in 57 different ways, none of them pleasant.”
I’ve been trying to find a new character like hers to love for years, so I have gravitated toward intelligence shows ever since. I know they’re fake as FUCK because the CIA cannot tell everyone their current methods and sources. I don’t care. Emotionally, they’re all written the same way.
The way you get an accurate depiction of intelligence is to write about it in a time period where those operations are declassified. Those documents will tell you exactly how they did what they did without sugar coating anything. Dialogue can be accurate because there’s no reason for smoke and mirrors 40 years later…. or however long it takes for your interest to declassify, which may be a lot longer.
It is why I like the founding years of CIA the most, their origin story. OSS/early CIA operations are declassified, essential for an author if I want anything to sound real. The easiest stories to make true to life are now science fiction, I believe, because there is so much more information on how those intelligence operations actually ran between Russia and the US in the 50s and 60s. The way we got to the moon first was largely due to a war between CIA and KGB, because we had real chatter they were going to put nukes on the moon.
Speaking of which, I got to see Vince Houghton at Jonna’s talk the other night. So good to see him. Vince was the host of “SpyChat” before Dr. Andrew Hammond took over. His non-fiction book about intelligence is called “Nuking the Moon,” which is what made me think of him. 😉 I don’t think Dr. Hammond was in the audience, because I would have known his Scottish brogue anywhere. And yes, it is like James Alexander Malcom McKenzie Fraser does Spycast.
I will be taking no further questions. 😉
Vince was actually on a PBS documentary about intelligence at Bletchley Park, and it focused on women. Of course Alan Turing is important, but he wasn’t the only operative there, either.
I find now that people’s true stories matter more to me than television and movies. I reference old media because I watch YouTube most of the time. That gets me Frontline and all the other PBS shows, plus videos about people making things. Live bootlegs are also exciting because they come in video now.
I just can’t think of channels that I subscribe to that would be that well known, and I’m always trying to use universal illustrations because my audience is all over the world.
I should start looking for an intelligence show to watch while Zac is busy, because I love “Slow Horses” and I could never cheat on him. That way, I will at least have some updated references and shows that aren’t 20 years old that still appeal to me.
I started one on Hulu that has so far been outstanding called “The Lazarus Project.” Go into it blind. It’s a rabbit hole with a great payoff.
I can already tell you that “Slow Horses” is going to be one of my new comfort shows. I’ll give you the basics.
River Cartwright blew up a bunch of people by not stopping a terrorist…… in a simulation at MI-6. It is taken every bit as seriously as if it had really happened, but they can’t fire him; his grandfather used to be “C” or something…. unclear, but a higher up (my prediction is that this is going to be Tinker Tailor and that the grandfather is a puppet master. I have only seen season one. Please don’t spoil).
Anyway, since they can’t fire River, they place him at “Slough House,” which is where all washed up MI-6 go. Then, it becomes a story about a team who everyone thinks is shit flipping the script. If I had to compare it to an American movie, it’s “Moneyball,” and the writers are just as good as Aaron Sorkin. They take everyone’s imperfections and they blend…… because River is every bit as smart as his grandfather and he is able to lead others. He made a mistake in a simulation, and Mi-6 isn’t prepared to accept the fact that River is the real deal, or they know exactly who he is and have to keep him out of the way. Unclear, and a brilliant plot device. Is his boss disgusted with him or proud of him? The audience knows. River doesn’t.
I love Gary Oldman, who plays River’s boss. If I had a picture in my mind when I watched the video of Jonna calling herself “a real hardass at CIA,” it was Lamb.
I also love Jack Lowden, as well. I’ve gotten to know him through watching Graham Norton. It was great because I knew who Jack was before I got into “Slow Horses” at all.
“Killing Eve” is another one of those shows I’ve watched over and over, but I haven’t seen the end. I just keep rewatching the first few seasons, thinking I’m going to rewatch the whole thing and giving up. The pilot is the best episode of them all, anyway. It is a fight within me over whether Carolyn or Eve is my favorite character. Oh, wait. No. There’s not. I love Carolyn. It’s my mother’s name, as well as her character being an archetype I happen to love.
She kind of reminds me of Jack Bristow in “Alias,” except Jack had a bigger heart. Eve Pulaski is a lot like River Cartwright.
I used to love the show “Whiskey Cavalier,” because it was a very lighthearted look at CIA that didn’t suck up all the air in the room with drama. It was often ridiculous and therefore, well, fun.
I don’t always want as much realism as possible. Sometimes, I just want to be able to let go and laugh.
Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?
I have decided that I am a moose. This is because I have spent a lot of time thinking I was a squirrel. Yes, “Rocky and Bullwinkle” has fed my love of intelligence for many, many years….. as has “Inspector Gadget,” “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (I even have a retro t-shirt), and strangely, Jeopardy!. A lot of the time, the answers will contain intelligence operations that I’m interested to look up, because those questions come in lots of areas. Geopolitical, CIA’s affect on the United States’ reputation, etc.
You could have heard a pin drop in my mind when Jonna Mendez said MK Ultra came out of her office, and she walked past those drugs every day for 30 years because the refrigerator was from the 1970s, meaning it will outlive all of us. I’m sure that eventually, the science officer was made to destroy them, or the rest of the department was able to wrestle it away from him at some point. But, it was the first time in a long time that all the blood drained out of my face.
The truth is stranger than fiction, especially when it comes across in news spin and not data.
For instance, is it fortunate timing that we are now sending Palestine more aid, or did Biden specifically keep that little chestnut for the State of the Union address? I was telling a friend the other day that I think this whole thing revolves around having not to hate what Israel has done. That we really can’t stand what they’re doing, and also can’t afford to cut off intelligence from Mossad. It’s trickier than you think. Intel from Mossad is valid. Info from Palestine may or may not be valid because they don’t have government checks and balances. They don’t have a government because they’re not a state. It doesn’t have anything to do with “we don’t like the Palestinians.” It’s that they don’t have people in the room.
The answer is getting the Palestinians in the room. Most Israelis want this, too, because the neighborhoods are so integrated. Palestine comes across as a terrorist group because “they don’t have a flag.” It’s not that it’s not there. It’s that it can’t be recognized anywhere in the world as a sovereign nation because the Israelis absolute do not want that….. coming from the top. This is not a bottom up resolution, but top down. I swear to you, Netanyahu wouldn’t think twice about killing his grandmother if she was Palestinian. He also doesn’t care how many Israelis die because they’re just collateral damage.
And people think this is about Judaism and claim anti-Semitism when I don’t give a fuck what religion you practice, and neither does he. If he’s bombing integrated neighborhoods, he doesn’t care what religion you practice, either. Notice there aren’t many surgical strikes. It’s kill everyone.
They aren’t fighting over religion like they did in ancient times, they’re fighting to keep Palestine from getting an equal shake in things like NATO, or anyone else who could help them.
If you sided with the rebellion in Star Wars and you aren’t standing up for Palestine, you are not admitting what’s really going on here. Netanyahu and Putin are both trying to keep countries from recognition by taking them over.
Except Putin doesn’t care how many people he kills, either. So, whether you’re a Ukrainian fighting for your country or on the Russian side of things, you have an equal chance of dying, because Russia will just send in more cannon fodder.
It’s not about people’s lives, it’s about winning.
And now we want that kind of totalitarianism to come to the US by electing Donald Trump again, or at least, a huge minority that’s threatening to provide undertow to the fall off Rome. A good bit of the military is conservative as shit. What happens after the next election? We all of the sudden have two armies. January 6th will look like child’s play, because apparently the right to be a bigot is a huge ass deal here. Just like it is in Ukraine, and just like it is in Israel.
The only thing is that the Russian and Ukrainian people probably got along before Putin shook them up like ants. Finland is worried now, and it’s opening a very old wound. Sweden just joined NATO, so there’s something. We at least have one country over there in the general vicinity of Finland until they join themselves.
It’s all a mess. It’s all protecting the world from fascism. I don’t think we want it here, but if the Republicans win, it will be ushered in…. ballet service for pablum. Keep us occupied and we won’t revolt.
Reminds me of the old Apple commercial for the Macintosh (clever). Something about buying the computer is not making “1984” into 1984. And then they invented the iPhone, so clearly they didn’t mean it.
How much Facebook absolute shit do you have to wade through to see the few things you actually wanted to see? Who doesn’t respond immediately to their notifications unless they can disconnect long enough to put on “Do Not Disturb?”
“You can’t do that. We live here!”
Et cetera.
Suzy Izzard has the answer to everything.
I’m sure that relationships with countries evolve like relationships between adults. After all, it’s actually individual personalities and patterns move the same way as specifics. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but as a preacher’s kid I constantly noticed little things writ large.
Again, I grew up as a preacher’s kid and I’ve had lots of pastors as an adult. I have been to many, many committee meetings as an adult, just armed with a lot of back channels to be able to understand the bullshit games running in the room. I didn’t even have to call my dad, and most of the time, didn’t. I called friends who were either theological giants in their own right, or students who’d been taken under care by our church (what it means to be in discernment/seminary because you need a home church to be able to support you in some ways….. why it’s called “being taken under care.”
The Methodists do it differently than the Congregationals. In a Congregational church, like a Presbyterian or an Episcopal church, you are called by the individual church. With the Methodists, you basically function independently from step one, which is how my dad ended up pastoring two churches (called a “Circuit Rider,” a term created where ministers traveled by horse). Here’s the rest of the story. He was 19. I am sure some days went better than others, and he’s got more class than I do, so I’m not sure that he said “fuck” every day, but it wouldn’t have been a bad idea.
My dad could deal with enormous tragedies as he got older because he saw them all as a pastor.
My personal moment of pastoring was when we had a couple give birth to a baby who was only at 24, 25 weeks at most. She survived, and I became her babysitter. We bonded because I was eight weeks early. I was 14 or 15, and I wanted the parents to always ask me to come back because I’d imprinted on her. They called me often. I still remember her name was “Peyton.” Being up in front of people and preaching is 10% of the job at most. The rest of the time, it’s dealing with parents who have lost children, children who have lost parents, spouses who have lost spouses, and all the intimate conversations you have with a pastor leading up to it. If someone was going through a thing and at our house or church a lot, I got used to seeing them and took on all their pain by osmosis, because I don’t go looking for other people’s feelings. They come to me quite naturally, as if by a magnetic pull. I can open up to people, which gives them license to open up to me.
So, I feel like I don’t have the ability to stop caring about anyone, because those feelings flow through me all the time. I remember people’s stories from 40 years ago. That’s the two things that stopped me from starting a church. The first is that I burned out on pastoral care already. The second thing is that my mother died and two things happened. The first is that I needed her as my music director and she died. I didn’t want to work with anyone else at first. We were building a church. We weren’t to the stage where we can invite major musicians to play, and I assure you, my mother has sounded amazing with the best of the best. Google “Sylvia Danburg,” my concertmaster at HSPVA. They did a duet at my church when she was 14 that still lives in my memory…. not the melody, but the way it made me feel.
Being that empathetic and that neurodivergent cost me, because I’ve always been too intense for everyone. It’s why I spend so much time alone. I don’t have to hear it. If people think I’m too much, I am not threatened. I got shit to do.
I think bigger than most people because my personality type is very rare….. and all the comorbidities with my mental health make me astoundingly curious.
It’s a lot.
For instance, now I’m thinking about looking up the history of the moose. Because I am no longer a squirrel. I admit that I still have a “deer in headlights” look on my face a lot of the time, but at least I’m not tiny. I’m taller than I thought. More muscle mass. I can protect my brain from a lot of things, even rejection, because everything comes from me. I needed to develop a thicker skin, which I have now. I didn’t so much in the early days of my relationship with Supergrover. I believe she thought that she was more hurt than I was. We both overestimated our own pain and underestimated the other’s.
So, I hope that if Supergrover knows nothing else, she knows that this is not a cat and mouse game. We have both stopped playing, and it remains to be seen whether she agrees with me that getting real was a good thing.
I found it interesting that she said I knew nothing about her life, when everything I said about her attachment style turned out to be a double bullseye. I cannot speak to how she treats her family or her friends, but our particular dynamic was toxic at times, merely inauthenic at others. We’d reached the “merely inauthentic” phase long ago, and I could feel it on my skin.
I saw the writing on that particular wall, and wrote this weird letter in which I know I invalidated her feelings and I’ve apologized for it, because that’s not what I meant to do. What I meant to do was call her out on her bullshit so we could move on. Yet again, taken as an attack and swept under the rug so that my feelings were always invalidated and she thought that me telling her once or twice was a problem? How am I supposed to react when I open up to you and you say nothing, yet you have a shit ton of feelings about me and you’re telling someone else. I have never been wrong about that, either, until I sent her an e-mail on a related topic and she finally yelled at me……. and owned her shit like a boss.
I don’t want a relationship with someone who will string me along for years at a time. I want a relationship with someone who’s fiery and not afraid to stand up to me. I had that, and over time, I didn’t.
She said something about painting things as fact that I didn’t have the right to do. Yet, I have no idea what she’s talking about. It’s confusing, and not something we should avoid. The clearest way out is through. I just couldn’t convince her of that because she thought I was playing a cat and mouse game, or she was. Unclear.
What was clear is that we have such an incredible friendship when we’re not putting up walls that it was worth fighting for, even if I lost. That’s because the message I sent her was that I needed her anger at me. That her anger is so pure because she hasn’t been telling me what she really needs from me for a long time. Now, what she needs from me is grace and peace to think. Or, at least, I hope that’s what she wants from me. However, I did ask her if there was anything she wanted from me, including talking about our real issues now that we’re on the same page. It didn’t seem like playing games anymore.
And now I’ve explained the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Palestine has an anxious attachment to the world because they’ve never been given the safety and security of a two-state solution. Israel is avoidant because Netanyahu is not going to give up anything he’s not willing to give. It’s an impasse, and one that probably won’t get solved in my lifetime just like it didn’t get done in my mother’s. The conflict is too large, and the Americans shouldn’t do anything but send humanitarian aid to both people. Food. Medicine. Blankets. Doctors Without Borders (MSF). Those are the teams we should be sending, not military aid to a leader that will certainly unleash hell on everyone if it means he’s going home with a trophy.
This has nothing to do with Judaism. I’ve been to temple on Friday nights before, and it’s always been one of the most moving experiences I’ve ever had. When my grandmother died, I actually read The Kaddish through transliteration, because even though I’ve studied Hebrew, it’s in the context of dictionaries, not conversation. I’ve sung Hebrew before. Judaism is one of the cornerstones of my faite because just like “Little Mosque on the Prairie” (my favorite Canadian TV show), we had a church and a synagogue sharing space. The best part is the Episcopalian minister and the young Imam, because they do a kind of Denny Crane, Alan Shore thing by talking about their lives in pastoral care and they both have ALL the same problems. I could have walked onto the show and made people laugh just as much as they did, I assure you.
Here’s my favorite story in life. I will not tell you the name of the minister, because he has gone on to local television (and is a genuinely good guy). I don’t know if this story would make him laugh or make him mortified. My dad will know who I mean instantly, and that’s all that matters.
So, ministers, imams, and rabbis all have ways of marking someone as a child of God. For Christians, it’s baptism. In the Methodist church, this is not as extreme as a dunking in the river.
We just use a bowl of water and sprinkle it on the baby’s head…. what probably prompted me to wet all over the bishop, in retrospect. Sometimes it’s not easy to hear or feel rain when you’re about to burst. This is universal…… or at least, that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
So, the senior minister asked the associate if he would go and get the Holy water in the baptismal font. He was not specific. What he meant was, “get the bowl and bring it to me.” It was in a 3,000 lb granite sacristy, and he tried to drag it across the floor. In the middle of the service. Which may or may not have been recorded.
I’ve told this story before, I think, but one time my dad did the wedding for a retired New England Patriot and his fianceé. The boys got a little too drunk the night before the wedding, and all of the sudden my dad feels who is basically Refrigerator Perry to him start leaning forward. I’m going to leave you with that image because the imagination is even better. He was woozy a long time….. but frankly, I only remember that someone ended up throwing up at at the wedding, but I’m not sure it was the groom.
Life as a minister is, as you can see, so glamorous.
The funniest stories are about the things that went wrong, not right. For instance, this little old lady we all adored because she gave absolutely no fucks stood up in the middle of worship and said, “David, have you lost your mic?” That is because it sincerely made my dad wonder how to respond and the room went still. Finally he figured it out and said, “I thought you asked if I had lost my mind.” That joke never would have been as good had it not been the “no fucks given” woman. Plus, it wouldn’t have bothered any of the four of us to be accused of losing our minds every day….. with no idea how they ever participated in the crazy because it would have been inappropriate to tell them. You’re as buttoned down as any therapist. You cannot say what you know. You cannot say at 11 years old that you know why they’re mad, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s your whatever relationship that’s getting you in trouble because my bedroom was next to my dad’s office. Yet I’m as much of a lockbox as he is, or I was until I became a blogger. Other people’s secrets were weighing me down, because I stopped putting my own opinions out there. Pleasing other people was not a choice for me, because Show Mode™ is relentless when your parent is a public figure.
You don’t have the choice whether to emote or not, because you cannot trust anyone. Is this a safe adult to talk to, or is this a way for them to get information on my dad to create a “gotcha” question in a board meeting?
My dad and John Grisham told me the most about life early on. The first, from my dad, is that people who don’t have power anywhere else will unload their frustration with this in church meetings. Their ego comes out quick, and they perhaps get more aggressive than normal. From John Grisham, “the hardest part about being a lawyer is having to convince 12 K-mart clerks you’re right.” Being a mediator becomes an impossible task at some church meetings because tempers are all flying high and you have to be the one that sits back and takes it because you’re the pastor. It’s your job to mediate them through the middle of the mess. You don’t get to have feelings, because you’re impartial- even though those decisions affect your parent the most.
It’s honestly why I believe that a church cannot be run by committee all the time, and I’m glad that even the congregational churches have denominational support. There are reinforcements to bring in so that there are more neutral parties; the pastor can have feelings, too. They don’t have to be the strong one anymore because there’s someone above them to take on the objective role and mediate.
When pastors tell you how they feel about something and try to sway a vote one way or the other, that’s picking favorites and trying to get them to vote the way you want. It’s rule 101 of being a pastor as something that will not work out well for you. The people on the outside are going to notice they’re on the outside.
You become your own nuclear bomb in which the congregation schisms because you can’t find your way to objectivity with a map and a flashlight……. which is exactly why my church fell apart and the new pastor sweated through every stitch to put us back together. I’m not sure that she knows I think that, but she’s entirely responsible for the congregation being healthy because it’s welcoming of all and not your inner circle.
This also says a lot about world politics while describing very small things. It’s applicable all over the world to different conflicts. It also depends on how you react to the pressure. Are you going to compromise or double down?
Maybe I’m a moose and a squirrel. A moose’s personality in a squirrel’s body, at least. Between Bullwinkle’s ineptitude and Rocky’s smarts, it feels a lot like the spectrum I inhabit. But part of being a moose in a squirrel’s body is learning to walk a little taller.
We may not beat Russia today, but I do hope we prevail. They need our help the most in terms of world balance, because the longer the rift goes between the US and Russia, the closer they get to China. They decide to hedge their bets and go with the other guy. Then, we keep ourselves wide open to Russia bombing the oilfields in Alaska…… because we’ve never had to face Russia and China at the same time, but I’m not thinking we’d like it. Sounds like a crazy idea, but I’m not trying to invent a conspiracy theory. I’m trying to present that the United States is up against a superpower and a former superpower banding together against us. That’s because we’re not the sun, as much as we’d like to think we are.
It takes us so much to be able to stop those kinds of things before they happen, because even if I’m not right on the money, I know I am describing a situation that could potentially happen in the wide realm of possibilities. If we got intel that Russia was about to blow up our oilfields, we’d probably burn them down before they could get to them. You don’t like us? Ok. Here goes all your oil, all the projects in Sakhalin to bring you fuel, the Alyeska pipeline, all of it. Just try us. If we can’t use it, neither can you.
But that’s why conflicts move as slow as they do. No one wants to interrupt American industry….. even in China, for the most part. Another delicate balance until China discovers they don’t need us anymore.
They’ll realize it a lot faster if we put a Russian “useful idiot” (UI) in The White House.
And then team up.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And that describes relationships between two people as well as it does war. Do you react more when you’re hurt, or whether your friend is hurt? When you hurt someone, they’re likely going to confide in someone else about it, possibly someone who didn’t like you, anyway. Then, the original person has two enemies.
Russia and China are talking behind our backs like bitchy little mean girls, while inviting Kim Jong WTF for tea. I know most Americans don’t see this, because they don’t work in systems like I do. They don’t create scenarios that are fictional, yet just real enough. I wouldn’t have included details that sounded a bit scary if I didn’t genuinely care how this election went. It is a disaster for CIA to re-elect Trump. Neither White House nor intelligence officials will be allowed to tell you anything real. We will continue living in a fractured society with two different realities for far longer than necessary.
No one needs your version of the Bible, where the line between heaven and hell is only a hair’s breadth, making your people live in fear. No one believes Jesus, that the message is power with, not power over. No one likes a God of promise at either end of the spectrum because one has poisoned the other. When atheists meet me, it’s at first like I’m some sort of mythical creature that I can interpret scriptures for them off the top of my head that doesn’t sound like an absolute lunatic story because I know everything in the Bible is figurative and not literal. It can’t be literal. It wasn’t written down until long after it happened. Mistakes were made.
Most atheists haven’t heard of feminine or queer theology, that takes the message they’ve heard their whole lives and flips it on its ear. I don’t evangelize, I just talk like I talk. I’m not trying to change them and they know it. I allow them to take off their armor because I’m a resource if they want to know something but not an entitled dickhead who thinks they ought to know it whether they want to or not.
Even Jesus didn’t evangelize that way. It was, “I have something people want. Follow me if you want it, too.” The modern interpretation of this is somewhat alarming. Basically, you just say what you want to say and if they don’t want to hear it, you move on. That’s why they traveled. They didn’t take anyone who didn’t want to hear the rest.
We of the United States have not had that policy very often. That’s due to Evangelical Republicans twisting the meaning of Christian so badly that I cannot stand saying I am one, because it instantly brings up all the wrong images. Everything I stand for is concentrated into venom towards the limitations that that sect has put on me. I am a very flawed individual. The teachings of Jesus help me deal with that. What they don’t do is tell me to bother my friends when they’ve already stated their beliefs, and the most I’ve ever said is “if you’re looking for a church, come with me.” She did come, but wasn’t ready for membership.
Now she’s the accompanist, and I told her that if I could play inside baseball, I’d tell her to do a jazz arrangement of “Joyful, Joyful” as the postlude. I once watched her play Janis Joplin on stage, and her band (Twisted Whistle) used to play at my pub all the time.
I think she can handle it.
My purpose is helping people to be stronger in themselves by laying out my fears and dreams first. It makes it easier to come clean with yourself when you’re already in a vulnerable place from reading. I lay out my fears. You lay out yours, to yourself. And we both allow ourselves to feel nourished. The writer/reader connection is as unbreakable as hearing Bullwinke say, “hey, Rocky! Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!”
I love cartoons, especially when they remind me of me.
I got my review on our interactions at the book talk. Jonna Mendez told my dad that I’m a “spitfire,” and she won’t have any idea how much that means to me, because everyone has called my ex-wife that since she was a toddler and it felt like at the lecture, I brought my own shoes. So, not only was it an enormous compliment, it was sentimental in word choice for me. I loved it.
She’s kind of my inspiration as for what life will be like for all retired spies. That they’re having fun in their retirement when they’ve had such thankless jobs all their lives. The military gets plenty of recognition, but at CIA, you don’t want anyone to know you’ve literally moved heaven and earth that day. You can’t let anyone know. So, you’ve basically got a vet with PTSD living in your house and you may never know why. That doesn’t seem fun to me….. not the doing cool shit part. That seems great. Not being able to tell people what you do leaves out an entire piece of who you are. No one thinks of government wonks as having PTSD, and let’s face it. Most people at CIA are, in fact, government wonks with a desk job because the directorate of operations is not the entire Agency.
You just have to assume that every employee is Jonna Mendez, because if they were, they couldn’t tell you. It’s how you have empathy for intelligence officers in operations without asking any questions at all. Most people tell their partners that they’re CIA because of the logistics involved with why mom or dad has to be gone so often and at a moment’s notice.
No one tells their friends, their parents, their kids anything until they’re at least able to understand the seriousness of keeping quiet. It varies. Marti Peterson’s son figured it out on his own, I think, at about 15 (Marti Peterson was Trigon’s handler, the one that kept us far ahead in the Cold War.). Some people, like taking the vows to become a priest, decide that having a family is too much to handle and they live their entire lives under green glass.
The road to Oz is paved with good intentions.
I think I have found why I’m in love with intelligence. It’s the only profession I’ve found in the government where the research makes me wonder about their lives at home. I’m a very emotional, highly sensitive person. When I read things where Jonna is in danger, my heart still beats fast though nothing physically happened to her, BUT IT COULD HAVE. I’m such a tender heart hear that I want to hug her for surviving something that happened 30 years ago, so she’s probably okay, and I’m still like, “do you need Kleenex?”
I treat her like the cool grandmother, the one that makes Halloween exciting because who would know more about disguise? Ok, so Jonna and Tony Mendez Halloweens. Gotta talk about it. I wonder what it was actually like vs. what I think happened. They’re retired disguise artists and Tony was a magician. I’m not saying it was epic, but it being boring doesn’t add up in that particular household.
I’m buried in her book right now, and I’m debating getting a Kindle copy because it’s not large print. My eyes are glazing over even though I’m desperately interested because I don’t have a bright enough light to be able to see the text.
I know I’ll get a copy at some point, anyway, because I would like to have it in my digital library in case the house catches fire (now that I’ve been through two house fires, I’m practical). All of my signed Mendez books are kept in the top drawer of a very tall dresser- no mirror, just extra storage. There’s probably a very fancy French name for it, but I’m in the groove and I don’t want to break it to look it up. I have them all now. All of them autographed, and all but the newest on my Kindle as well.
So, that’s why it’s cool that Jonna thinks I’m a spitfire.
Who gets to meet their favorite author, and it turns out they like each other? It’s insane.
As I joked many years ago, “I have now met all of my favorite authors- Anne Lamott, David Sedaris, and Jonna Mendez. It was an absolute pleasure for Jonna to meet me.” I think she said something like, “charmed,” but it was funny. She is so fast.
When she’s in front of me, I just see graphics of “The Flash,” because that’s what happens in my head when I think about all the layers of complexity there are to the things she says in public. I actually do get more of that in my daily life thanks to Zac working in intelligence, which just reinforces my strict boundaries on what I will and won’t ask her. I wasn’t trying to throw her a fast one in the YouTube video. I was giving her a true moment of authenticity because when she was talking about a practical joke or whatever, of course it wouldn’t be classified. She could just be herself, with all her real emotions.
I am not a journalist, and I am not pretending that having a blog is equal to having a newspaper. Therefore, I just wanted a “slice of life” kind of story. What happens when I get involved with discussions on intelligence is that I am often quicker in my questions than they are in their answers; they begin to struggle against it because I am so smart that I am definitely on the right track but we can’t go there anymore. Zac can tell me with one look when the Chinese Wall needs to go up, and he doesn’t even have to look at me. I can tell by the way he reacts physically, even when I’m behind him.
I do not want to know the rest of the story. I want to know how much I’ve gotten right in the reading I’ve done. I am really the Autistic State Department all by myself, or so it has seemed some days. I am also every bit as uptight as Leo calling The New York Times to tell them they misspelled Qaddafi in the crossword.
Lindsay once called me David from “Six Feet Under,” and in retrospect I know it’s not because we’re queer……….. Lindsay and I are David and Claire to an enormous degree depending on when you meet us. I’m reminded of this because earlier I was talking to someone about how I loved the ads in the pilot.
I would like to think I’m more David Rose (Schitt’s Creek) than David Fisher, but you get what you get. Honestly, it being surprising Jonna called me a “spitfire” is precisely because I think of myself as David Fisher. I’m completely buttoned down except to one person. A spitfire seems exciting. David Fisher is boring.
But maybe my inner David Rose comes out more when she’s around, like flipping each other shit after the book talk. If I had been drinking something, you would not be getting this entry. I would have choked and died right there.
I told Oliver, who is a dog, all about it. He is now apprised of all my current operations, covert and public-facing. The thing I love about Oliver is that he loves being around me whether I’ve been a jackass that day or not. And I have very few days in which I don’t look like a jackass at one point or another. He’s the one I go to when I’m at the end of my rope, because what he lacks in conversational skills he makes up for in presence.
But sometimes, I do like feedback.
I need to talk to someone who knows geopolitical affairs and yet has no access to classified documents so that whatever they say won’t get me into hot water when I talk about things here. That’s why it’s easier to run my relationship with Zac through the New York Times. If it hasn’t been published there, he doesn’t tell me. We are not keeping each other out. We are protecting me as a writer and him as a civilian employee in intelligence, as well as Navy Reserves. It’s just better all the way around if we pretend the world isn’t going to hell in a handbasket and just enjoy “Slow Horses” together.
You know what’s better than watching Slow Horses? Watching it with someone who is really in intelligence and pauses it to point out sloppy tradecraft and/or plot. I like pausing it because it is literally the VH1 Pop Up Video of MI-6.
That’s the best thing about seeing spies talk about their memoirs when they retire, actually, because depending on when they left, you can learn about the operations that went on during your childhood….. for instance, one of the things I loved about Argo is that the real events happened when I was two. It was not ancient history to me, it was within my lifetime.
I feel the same way about operations in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, etc. All the things that informed who I was as a person back then. Getting to see behind the press is the most fun part of studying intelligence. Getting to beat the press? I’m not that important, nor do I want to be.
I can say so much more in describing people than I can in describing what is going on politically, because people can relate to a conversation in the room. They can’t relate to countries talking in a room. It’s like most people not having a relationship with a million dollars, so they have no concept of how small or large that is. However, they know exactly how much $25 is and how it would affect them if they lost it.
I know this because one of my friends from one of our churches told me that after we left (by many years), they were in a huge budget discussion over a multimillion dollar restoration project that resolved quickly and fought over buying the kids’ Easter baskets.
People don’t have a concept when it comes to scale.
I am happy being but a citizen of Locker C, because I’ve found the right balance of how to know without knowing. How to judge by sensory perception and not words. Ultimately, what happens in the world doesn’t matter as much as what’s happening inside my boyfriend’s head. I see the difference, because he can say “the world’s a mess and I’m tired,” but he’ll be taking no further questions. I just try and hug the tension out of him, because I know that he’s carrying information he can’t talk about, but our mirror neurons can. They’ve had extensive conversations at this point.
Because I’m starting to think that Zac agrees with Jonna. I’m a spitfire, and other people know it better than I do. Honestly, what gives me the balls to write what I write is being a preacher’s kid. I have seen/met so many, many people over my lifetime and I’m only now starting the process I saw as a child. Seeing someone transition from being afraid of having an opinion to knowing it’s not right to let someone steamroll all over you and if you don’t say anything, you’re part of the problem. I was part of the problem in a lot of cases because I wouldn’t talk about my feelings. I have a barbed wire fence in my heart, and I gave SG! my access code. That way, her area was compartmentalized- what made it feel so much like a secret.
Seeing each other in a different context so that we weren’t constantly at each other’s throats has only been on the table once, and it was a long time ago. She wasn’t ready, but she told me that there was a possibility in the future and she’s told me over and over that she doesn’t lie about anything. It wasn’t a put-on, we’ve just changed over the years.
I wasn’t so much creating a dream, in retrospect (from yesterday 🙄). It was constant reassurance that we could do such a thing. That I wasn’t weirded out by the idea when it was frightening we might not vibe in person the way we do through writing. It might have broken what we have rather than supporting it. I don’t think I’ll ever know. But what I do know is that I was reassuring myself that this was real, keeping myself grounded, and hoping she’d help. She didn’t until recently, because the longer we didn’t talk about things, the worse I felt. It was dehumanizing to an enormous degree, because she doesn’t see me as hurt. She sees me as angry, so she’s hurt. I am angry. I am hurt. But it doesn’t turn off the emotions I have regarding things that have felt like love but somehow aren’t?
I felt that tension, and she confirmed it. She was hiding how she felt because she was afraid of my reaction, which has now happened three or four times in our relationship, and the first crack in the facade that this was not going to be good for me is that she accused me of something I didn’t do and held it over my head until I explained to her what actually happened. She admitted she’d been deflecting from another issue. It’s a pattern that has repeated for ten years, except her avoidance of problems scares me. I’m used to being able to talk it out. She’s used to sweeping things under the rug. It’s a fundamental difference in what makes us achieve equilibrium.
So, the more I opened up, the more she felt guilty. The more she felt guilty, she tried to placate me. She thought that I was demanding of her time, when I was demanding that she tell the truth. That’s all. Stop leaving me in the dark about everything so that I know how to plan for any kind of future. It’s exhausting thinking about all of them.
I don’t know what changed, but something did. I couldn’t anticipate her needs. She couldn’t anticipate mine. But we could have fixed it a lot earlier than we did…. because at present I feel like it’s fixed. I didn’t deny anything, and I didn’t apologize for it, either, because I refuse to know you’re hurt in advance. You’re the one derailing my story at that point, because I don’t make shit up. I think about what I know, because that’s how much control I have.
If I have enough chutzpah to talk about my problems every day, I expect that other people are also that emotionally capable. I’m not always right, but I know I’m giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and not “talking down to the audience.” I tire quickly of people who can’t emote, because I refuse to live in the traditional culture of women….. doing most things by inference while men just say what they want and if other people agree with them, they say so. If they think another man is an idiot, they’ll say that, too. What they won’t do is stand there and say nothing….. at least in my experience. A Texan will not let themselves be wrong with grace and style. They won’t let other people “be wrong,” either, because all men are convinced that if they explain something, it’s correct. When men are together, everyone decides how correct they are in percentages.
It seems dumb, but it allows everyone to take up room and have their own opinions while also allowing everyone to save face….. the idiots gaining at least a point for comic relief.
That’s what I need in my relationships. For the other person to realize that I know I own 50% of the problem, but if your way of resolving it is to put distance between us, you’ll only feel more resentful the next time we get together. You think you’re saving my feelings. but it hurts more when the fight resolves a year or two later by taking 20 minutes to talk/cry it out. Now we’ve traded 20 minutes for a year in which we could have been happier, because the energy it takes to dislike someone is heavy and dark. I don’t want to carry it longer than necessary.
If that’s how my feelings are about someone, I’ve learned to find closure in myself and move on. I don’t have time to waste on people who find deflection easier than conflict resolution. I have found those people over and over in my life, because lots of people tiptoe around me. I want to know why to change me, but also why other people stop taking up space when they’re perfectly entitled to it. It’s so much easier to be giants together than unable to express ourselves because we’re afraid.
However, it’s easy to see how this pattern begins. You think you’re compatible because the connection is explosive. You think differently, so you’re feeding separate parts of each other’s brain. Over time it becomes toxic because one person gets so tired of the other emoting………. which makes the other person scared of emotions and avoidant as well. Then, neither of the people in the relationship are helping to resolve conflict and move on.
The trap is manhole cover in size, as has been with all of the women I’ve been with. Even with polyamory sometimes it’s about difference and sometimes it’s not realizing that the people’s unique experiences make them seem different. You just don’t realize it until the new wears off….. my fear of ever getting married again. That I will get stuck with someone who can’t talk about their emotions, but I won’t find out until I’m completely invested like I was with Sam, et al, I assure you.
For me, getting married again would be paperwork, because I don’t want a partner to be able to touch my inheritance, for instance. It’s too precious, not that I wouldn’t share it should I choose to when I’m as ancient as you’re going to be. I’m the type person that if I have it and my people need it, it’s theirs. But I’ve never had enough money to test my limits, which so far have been using me up first.
It was worth it for a moment of being a spitfire, because I know it takes one to notice another.
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
I wrote this last night and hit the wrong button. You’ll get today’s writing prompt later. 😉
This evening I find myself caught between reading and writing, because I just got home from hearing Jonna Mendez talk about her new autobiography, “In True Face.” I think this is my new favorite story in life, thus why I wanted to write it down right away.
As I’ve said before, Jonna and I know each other a little bit, and she was bummed she didn’t get to invite me herself- glad I got the message because “you usually come to these things.” But we didn’t speak beforehand, I just gave her a nod; she smiled as I sat down.
She talked about living in Kansas, growing up in her sister’s shadow. Marrying two case officers and living in their shadows, somewhat. I don’t think she would think of herself as living in Tony’s shadow if he wasn’t known the world over as Ben Affleck on screen. a
It’s one thing to see your life, well, in real life. Quite another to see it reflected back to you in media. I have no idea who Tony really was, but here is what I do know.
In all the time that I’ve known her, she’s never called him “Tony” when we were in the same room. I noticed it right away. The telltale sign that she’s hiding something. There has to be something left for her, that only she gets. She has to talk about him publicly. Tony Mendez is as much as she can handle during speaking engagements. That’s because she’s not talking about her husband. She’s talking about his trademark and his tradecraft.
I can’t imagine how hard that is, but I can empathize with the idea of it. I haven’t lost a partner, but I have lost a mother. Talking about what my mother did professionally is indeed the easy part. I see and understand it deeply because I have been there so many times. It gets easier, and it looked to me that she was doing okay. You’re never the same, but it’s only been since 2019. Therefore, we could both feel his presence in the room…. because I moved to DC after Tony stopped doing public appearances (he got Parkinson’s Disease), but have been one of the Mendez’ biggest fans for years. The writer/reader connection is unbreakable, especially for writers like Jonna, Tony, and me. I write every day about my life and they saved theirs up for publication, but at the end of the day it’s all us spilling our guts and trying to make sense of a lot of shit that will never reconcile.
I wonder what was going on in her head when, during the Q&A, a man asked how she responded to (and I’m paraphrasing, here) all the horrible shit that CIA has done worldwide since 1947…. like MK Ultra (my first thought? “Look here, you little shit…”). She disposed of him as quickly as I’ve been taught by my dad. How to de-escalate? Tell the absolute truth.
She said, “you know, MK Ultra came out of my office and it went horribly, horribly wrong. We didn’t want to get caught with our pants down and we didn’t use anyone who didn’t sign up. But we didn’t know all the things about x, y, and z that we do now (I am only giving the gist, I don’t want to speak for her), and that she felt CIA had already owned up to it.
Then we moved on.
Another guy asked her how long there was between John and Tony or some other dumbfuckery. It was like there was a test with some sort of “gotcha” that wasn’t there. I’m guessing those people were from magazines or something, because if you were there tonight, you were a fan. Amanda (Education and Outreach) told us that we were the fan club, and I believe it. Want to know how I know that? I talked the guy’s ear off in front of me and by the time he got to the checkout he also bought “The Moscow Rules.”
Everywhere I go, Jonna Mendez sells books. I don’t know what it is about me. I have never been able to sell anyone on anything else, but my excitement about watching real spies vs. the hyped up bullshit normally on TV seems to resonate with people. The truth is that people believe CIA is associated with all that Bond hero shit, and that’s fine. I’m not here to take away their fantasy.
But I am here to tell you that through Jonna Mendez telling her own story, I know what it feels like to be eye to eye with Bin Laden… or at least, that high value a target. She wasn’t specific. Probably won’t be, because I don’t think those ops will be completely declassified for a long time.
I wondered what it had been like to carry that burden. What it had been like not to be able to talk about what she’d been through, because I’ve been interested in psychology since university. What does it do to the brain to carry information like that long term?
If we are not doing a very good job at taking care of the military when they come home, I doubt the government is pulling out all the stops for CIA. I am not saying that there aren’t as many resources for case officers as there are for the military. I just don’t know any people in the military that aren’t allowed to tell people they joined. Your husbands and wives absolutely are doing the dangerous shit you think they are if you have even the slightest hint that they’re C/DIA.
What if you had to be next to Putin in disguise so you could take a picture of the document he was about to sign? You have three seconds and it has to be perfect because this won’t ever happen again. Would your hands shake?
Jonna Mendez has never existed at CIA. Ever. I know that while she worked there, her first name was “Faith,” but she did not reveal her middle and last names. But even if she had, it wouldn’t have mattered. I’m sure “Faith” is just one of the many lives she led.
One of her fears was that she would die overseas under her CIA name and no one would ever hear from her again. I would think that someone has found a way to fix this fundamental issue electronically, but I do not know for sure. In the era of printed tickets?
There are many unnamed stars on the wall at Langley, and I wonder how many more there are you can’t count. Again, because I don’t want to worry the mothers or whatever, there’s no way this problem cannot be solved already. I felt it, though, because she talked me through it on the train home as she wrestled it out. How she got to “this is it. I’m going to die alone.” It was not an unreasonable assumption. The terrorist across from her had armed guards. They didn’t make her. The terrorist did. To be clear, he also made three or four others. This was not a mistake in tradecraft on her part. Everyone came prepared for that meeting, except their guys had AKs.
I’ve heard that story from her before, but in the books it is not made as clear as it was to me tonight that who she met was absolutely no joke. It was her reaction. The way she said pure evil. There was a bit of trying to demonstrate how powerful this person was while also trying to keep out a deeper response from surfacing. I know that her purpose is educating the audience, not scaring them so bad they won’t come back. She just described the look in his eyes so perfectly that I knew she was standing in that memory for a nanosecond and stepping out of the pool.
The nanosecond is scarier than anything she could say out loud. No contest. Her real face is the one you’ve wanted to see all along.
What I haven’t said is about my participation in the whole thing. At “The Moscow Rules,” the line for questions was really long. So, I stand up, and not only is there no line, I can’t even find the microphone at first. So, I pretend like this is absolutely nothing at all and not the most embarrassing thing I have done all day and just go stand by the mic and wait. I did not think that this would happen, however.
Someone said, “the first question…” and she finished “is from Leslie.” I get to the mic and she says, “hi Leslie.” I said, “hi, Jonna.” She said, “how ya been?” It was like this unplanned “bit.” So, I thought… a spy wants to bust my identity on YouTube? She’ll do it. I said, “to the extent that you are able, will you play ball with me for YouTube? She looked at me questioningly, yet cautiously optimistic. I said, “I have seen you in another video describing yourself as ‘a real hardass’ at CIA. You talk about things that were done to you (she says she doesn’t want it to seem like a feminist rant)…. but what’s the funniest thing you’ve ever done to your staff? She said, “the only thing I can think of is that I married Tony Mendez. They thought I was insane.” It was the perfect end to a perfect talk for me, and I got exactly what I wanted.
At the book signing, she told me she saw my dad’s stuff, but she didn’t see mine. I told her that I’d gotten a professional author’s page, so you might see her lurking around the Facebook version of Stories, you might not. She asked for it, but when you write it down on a Post-It note, you never know if the person is going to remember or not. The funniest thing about Jonna’s Facebook profile is that it lists her profession as “photographer,” which is, I think, drastically burying the lead.
Oh, and I have never felt a more sick burn. Like, Supergrover sick burn it was so good. I laughed so hard I died for a second, then almost made her spit out her water because she didn’t know I spoke “microaggression.” I told her that some day I’d write something as good as hers, and she said “it’s good you’re still workin’ on that.” I said, “I’m going to laugh about that for three years.” It was to lighten the moment.
I saw her. In true face, I saw her. I said, “congratulations on owning yourself.” I’ll remember that smile forever. When you own yourself, you see others doing the same. Themes repeat themselves in my life and it was the only thing I thought would be in any way eloquent enough for the occasion.
She knew what I meant. Her bottom lip twitched in recognition of what I’d said while the rest of her face didn’t say anything at all.
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
I am extremely patriotic, but there’s a lot of this country who wouldn’t see it that way. Al Franken wrote about my kind of patriotism in “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right” (one of my favorite books since 2003, and if I were you I’d get the audiobook because he reads it). I’d thought something like this for a very long time, he just said it more eloquently than I could. I’ll paraphrase him because I don’t have a copy of the book anymore.
He said that Republicans seem to love America like children. To criticize anything means that you’re not a good American because everything America does is good and right. Democrats seem to love America like adults, that we’re calling out bad behavior that needs to be changed. We can think we live in a pretty great country and also admit there are problems. It’s costing us, because we argue like rabbis.
You can tell the difference by the types of media we watch. Both MSNBC and I will call out the president when they deserve it. Fox News viewers think that every Republican is perfectly perfect in every way, as evidenced by the fact that they’re still fuming about Hunter Biden, the 2016 election being stolen, and classified documents on a small scale.
Biden and Pence both had a few, both gave them back- no harm, no foul. At no time did they try to flush them down a toilet or hide them in the bathroom. Where the cult part comes in is that everyone else in the Republican Party has become a persona non grata because apparently Trump is the only one capable of running the country and they’re choosing to ignore 91 indictments (so far). I called him a bunch of names the other day, and I left out “rapist.” The E. Jean Caroll case is just one more thing that Republicans will sweep under the rug, because the party has one message. It’s simple, and that’s how they win.
Republicans are not interested in subtlety or nuance, which is why soundbites work on them, and why they’re in lockstep instead of working out issues amongst themselves. Seriously, when was the last time you ever saw a Republican in the media arguing about a plan for anything? When do they contribute to the discussion at all? Even if there was no bipartisanship, I would still expect ideas to originate on both sides. The plan for the last, I don’t know, 30 years? has been that the Republicans will say no to everything the Democrats put forth without ever putting anything on the table of their own. Their only job is to stonewall.
Republicans, you have to ask yourselves if this is really what you want from a political party. You have absolutely no voice in Congress, because the people you elect are just running out the clock. They don’t give a shit about you. If they did, your concerns would be on the floor of the House and Senate as well…… because Republicans would have actually come up with something on their own. You think you have elected “the best and the brightest,” when really it’s “the petulant and the indolent.”
Yes, part of it is laziness. Why wouldn’t it be if you’re only there to say “no?” You should wonder what they’re doing with all that free time instead of their own policies.
Name five Republicans you think are actually capable of running the country that are in the line of succession. “Designated Survivor” was a hyped up TV show, but the title absolutely is a real thing during the State of the Union. Name a Republican you’d want in that spot should disaster happen. I can think of one person, and that’s because the Republicans don’t like her, either. The Republicans are going to rue the day they kicked Mary Cheney out of their little cult.
I could also put up with Mitt Romney (keeping in mind that this is a fictional exercise), because he’s not as conservative as he had to be in order to get elected president. I really thought we were going to get universal health care back then, because it was such a raging success in Massachusetts, and he was the governor through all of it.
To be perfectly frank, the most surprising part of the rise of Trump is how many well-respected Republicans drank the Kool-Aid as fast as the ones who’s already earned my Molly Ivins death stare.
I have faith in two people out of a cast of hundreds, and neither of them will ever be elected again, unless Mary Cheney becomes a Democrat, and I’m serious because she can have a vote in Congress and that’s great. But Independents rarely win because they need the funding of the party. If nothing else, I hope she does it because she’s way, way more conservative than I am, but we need everyone who has had their blinders ripped off on our side, and I mean everyone. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” I think that was Abraham Lincoln, who could speak in complete sentences and managed to be a good Republican in spite of it.
The Democrats have a long history of racism, and I feel that now we’re the only ones who are struggling with it. Everyone else wants to sweep it under the rug because of course they do. No one wants to acknowledge that there’s an equal shot we’ll end up reflecting “The Handmaid’s Tale” as stumbling toward Panem….. and I am not Jennifer Lawrence.
This is because systemic racism and wanting to change it is a very, very violent proposition in this country, but luckily it’s a minority. It has just gotten more popular to be openly racist and violent because the Republicans have been quietly supporting the system until Trump came along and it wasn’t so quiet anymore.
I do not know what to think of this for my country, because on one hand, it’s terrible and I wish I had the power to turn off the neckbands that seem like jewelry until they make your head explode…. which is the problem entirely. Trump has his entire base by the short and curlies without a single shred of evidence he can actually do the fucking job.
Democrats are tasked with trying to keep the country together so that Trump doesn’t get a second shot at trying to become Hitler. Again, I do not believe that Trump is Adolf Hitler in his later years. I just believe that Trump has learned a lot about fascism from him (see also Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping). I don’t know if he’s actually read “Mein Kampf” or not, but he certainly loves politicians who’ve taken the same route that book laid out. Otherwise, how would a know-nothing idiot be able to get people to follow him?
By ignoring all the laws and congressional procedures and focusing on telling people that their problems were Mexicans and Arabs….. only the two cultures I’ve found to be the most welcoming. I would love to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria (particularly because Damascus is meaningful to me for Biblical reasons), and even Saudi Arabia (because I want to see where Franklin lived and worked, not that I’m interested in Saudi itself).
That’s because I know that for the average Arab, when I showed up at their house they would literally feed me until I exploded and then ask why I didn’t eat that much. Here, have some pie. I am not worried about what their government thinks of me, because I’m probably not going to meet them personally. If I’m going to Iran, I hope it’s to meet a Persian grandmother who will pass on her secrets because it won’t get back to her friends that I have her recipe and they don’t. 😉
I’m bad at transitions, and I would still move to Mexico in a heartbeat. My sister and brother-in-law feel the same way. Lindsay and I have both been to Enseñada, and she and Matt go to Mexico City all the time, one of their favorite cities in the world. It would actually be a good move for me to go to Mexico, because I think I could make more of my inheritance there than I could here. However, I would have to rent because only Mexicans by blood/birth have the right to purchase property. It’s similar to Hawaii, where you can only get a 99 year lease. What I know for sure is that I would freak out at the transition at first, but the pace of life is so different that I might adjust easier. Who knows? What I do know is that I already know enough Spanish to have simple conversations, and the more I spend in immersion, the more I remember from past trips and high school Spanish.
I am so grateful to my church in Sugar Land when I was a teenager, because if we hadn’t moved there, I wouldn’t speak Spanish nearly as well as I do (which even that much makes me feel like a toddler, but it’ll get better). This is because I took my first year of Spanish at HSPVA, and my second year at Clements. Loved one teacher, hated the other. I won’t say which was which. Then, in the summer between PVA and Clements, I went on a mission trip to Reynosa (our hotel was in McAllen). Because I’d just come out of first year Spanish, being immersed reminded me of Matthew and Bryn, who were and/or are lifeguards (and siblings, so that’s why it sounds the same coming from both of them). This is because it was a very short leap from a swim coach saying “do your bubbles… do your bubbles” to “hope you don’t drown.”
By the time I came back from Mexico, I was sold. I could do this whole Spanish thing. Interestingly enough, I don’t have conversation issues in Mexico because I know that there’s no reason to write anything down. I have to dance with them what brung me. I can’t disappear into my writing personality with them.
Then I got to my second year of Spanish, where my teacher and I both hated each other. That’s because she was so frustrated by my performance, and why it went up and down. In retrospect, it’s because only half the grades given were over conversations in person. The rest was writing. I had to study Spanish for a little while to learn that what she was looking for was more formal than I’d learned in Reynosa and Progreso.
My sentence structure was all wrong, and I’m sure to some degree it still is. However, our job that week in Mexico during the summer before the first semester at Clements was to put on what we in the States would call “vacation Bible school.” Just fun activities for the kids who are so poor they don’t get much play time.
Also, I’m not an ordained minister in a major denomination who preaches every week… though I can do some stuff; I got ordained in the Church of the Latter Day Dude to do Bryn’s wedding, which ended up being very Methodist/Episcopalian while also taking out the religion aspect and tailoring it to the couple.
It absolutely worked, because it was formal enough to feel like you’d been married by someone who did their homework, when in reality the most embarrassing thing about it was having to pay for ordination instead of earn it.
This is an aside, but I think one of the reasons my church plant wasn’t a success was because of a really old tape that I didn’t think to work out in therapy when I was young. That tape is “the Methodists kicked me out, so why would anyone else want me?” It wasn’t logical because I was 15, and I did meet other Christian lesbians who were ordained. By then, I had imposter syndrome.
The only reason I had the courage to come up with an idea for a homeless ministry in Silver Spring is that I got over my fear by preaching at my church in Oregon. I have never in my life asked to preach a sermon, but I was not the same preacher at 16 that I was at 24 or 5. It all ties together, my friends. The people on the trip told me that even though I wasn’t ordained, I had to do the sermon at the closing worship service because no one else knew enough Spanish. So, the second semester at Clements was harder than the first because my teacher was so frustrated and angry that I got Cs all semester and then a 95 on the final. She called my dad in so fast.
Now, my dad wasn’t a bully to my teachers, ever, because he actually knew I was fallible……….. but at the same time, he held them accountable and never lost a thing any of them said because he’d write in his notebook throughout the meeting and have the teacher sign it if it was accurate. I really liked that because it made both my teacher and me live up to a bargain instead of a lose-lose situation…. which Spanish was, because since I’d only studied hard with a tutor who unlocked writing for me (people who know her, Nancy Wells saved my ass) it didn’t seem possible that I was capable of an A and there was no way to prove it except to give me a second exam, and for some reason she didn’t think of that. She just fumed like she knew I’d gotten away with something and I was glad there was only a couple of weeks of school left, and no more required Spanish.
I won’t let you go, I just wait to see whether I’m a priority in your life because I don’t always want to be the one that initiates contact. I don’t want to be around you if I always feel like I’m nagging to get a simple answer out of you, or afraid to contact you because I feel like I’m bothering you rather than showing care. I wait to see if you show interest when I put something out there, just receiving you if you show up. I am able to do that so easily because I’m a writer. All artists have an easier time turning their attention away from obsessing over a problem when they can get it out.
My blog is ridiculously personal because what I have learned over my entire life is that no one will be honest with you if you’re not honest with them first. It’s what art is supposed to do- it’s supposed to make you feel something. However, I do not think of your reaction as my responsibility. It is your right to state your opinion and decide whether you’re owed an apology or not, because I do believe in freedom of speech, I just have limits.
For instance, I will never get any more specific about Zac’s other partners than I have been now. The one I was talking about in a previous entry likes coffee mugs and Diet Dr Pepper, like most of America. However, they do not get to be “characters” here except in the most vague of terms because I don’t directly talk to them and I don’t write hearsay. I talk to Zac, and our relationship is completely separate and apart from anything else in his life. I feel like that’s a small reason it’s easy for us to open up to each other.
He absolutely can tell me things in confidence (about our personal relationship- I keep saying that because he’s civilian intelligence M-F and Navy Reserves intelligence in his copious amounts of spare time). I just stand next to him with a “dumb yet excited” look on my face. The thing about government agencies, no matter which one, is that they look impressive and intimidating all at once. My favorite is the black and white seal on the floor at Langley, and for a long time my desktop wallpaper was a hi-def shot of the custodian mopping it. It was a reminder to me that even though people like George Lazenby, Martin Freeman, Daniel Craig, Melissa McCarthy, Piper Perabo, and Jennifer Garner make it look exciting, at the end of the day it’s still just a regular floor.
People accuse me of being a drooling fangirl (:::stares in Lindsay and Zachary:::), but that’s impossible if you really study the history of the agency. My favorite era so far is the space race, which shows up in everything from “For All Mankind” to “The Queen’s Gambit.”
“What part of the State Department did you say you were from?”
I have no doubt that CIA is trying to stop nuclear war right now. Whether the bombs are small or large, either Russia or The Middle East will have absolutely no problem with pushing the big red button. Also, it just occurred to me. You know who has nuclear weapons? Israel. You know who doesn’t? Palestine. Listen to me when I say that Benjamin Netanyahu does not give even half a shit how many Israelis die as long as it means “beating Palestine.” Palestine might be able to handle rocket launchers, rocks, etc. It remains to be seen whether nuclear threat is on the table, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised.
If nothing else, I think there’s going to be sort of a second movie like “13 Days,” where when the op is declassified the movie will show just how close Russia came to nuking the Ukraine or just how close Israel came to nuking Palestine- or just how close Iran got to figuring out how to make them on their own.
The other thing that makes the space race really interesting to me is that it wasn’t about discovery or hope or any of that Camelot bullshit. CIA was receiving legitimate chatter that the Russians’ plan after winning the space race was to put nuclear weapons on the moon. That’s why we were relentless in getting it done, why the “computers” saved our asses, why Houston is so dear to me, and Star City as well. Star City has been treating my Houstonians like warm friends for years now.
There were many, many Russians who became our assets in country, and many of them died for us, especially when Aldrich Ames gave the Russians all their names.
That did not stop private Russian citizens from helping us, because they ultimately thought they were helping Russia by stopping the Cuban Missile Crisis as well. It came down to some people who gave us Russian intelligence, and one very brave man, and no doubt the person on which “Crimson Tide” is based. The Russians were locked and loaded, and this man saved all our lives:
Thankfully, the captain didn’t have sole discretion over the launch. All three senior officers had to agree, and Vasili Arkhipov, the 36-year-old second captain and brigade chief of staff, refused to give his assent. He convinced the sub’s top officers that the depth charges were indeed meant to signal B-59 to surface — there was no other way for the US ships to communicate with the Soviet sub — and that launching the nuclear torpedo would be a fatal mistake. The sub returned to the surface, headed away from Cuba, and steamed back toward the Soviet Union.
Thank you, Russia. We really owe you an apology for thinking you were Gene Hackman instead of Denzel Washington.
Depending on the operation (because you can’t and shouldn’t agree with all of them), it’s an apt metaphor for The Company. For instance, there have been many times that CIA has gone into a situation and rescued people exactly like the houseguests, as huge a mop job yet completely unnoticed. Case officers don’t win awards in public. On the other hand, CIA has had misstep after misstep since 1947. Trying to overthrow governments, trying to kill Castro, the government giving the torture program to CIA when it never should have happened in the first place, etc.
I don’t love CIA like the Republicans, where everything mommy and daddy says is correct
That summer was when my dad decided to leave professional ministry and just become a member at his own church, somewhere he could be anonymous. We ended up at St. Martin’s Episcopalian, which is how I got to meet George H.W. Bush and James Baker III. Because the story of how Jonna Mendez “masked up” to show Bush how their new technologies worked, I kidded her in person that we had mutual friends. And in fact, the first time I saw James Baker, it was because he was taking up way too much damn room on a pew and my stepmom told him to move over like four times. She didn’t know who he was, but it doesn’t matter. It’s church. There’s no hierarchy as much as your admin board might think there is. I have noticed from some pastors that money tends to grease the wheel. It’s not politics, it’s gratitude. It takes some real hustle when you work in a cathedral, because generally those buildings are old as shit. Renovating the pipe organ at National Cathedral is literally going to be 14 million dollars, because I looked it up on their web site. And that’s just ONE of the multimillion dollar projects they have to have going to conserve the building.
Since we’ve been talking about politics, let me make something clear. Calling it “National Cathedral” is not because it’s supported by taxpayers. It’s because so many state funerals have happened there, as well as memorial services. When it is acting in its formal capacity as the ministers who carry out those services, it ceases to be an Episcopalian congregation and turns ecumenical quickly.
In reality, what I’ve noticed over time is that it’s a bunch of social justice warriors who show up every Sunday, and they generally only have to use one part of the sanctuary for that because of course they don’t fill up the whole thing each week. It seems to have two modes, and it’s every bit as drastic a change as being a Transformer™ and being a trans person. 😉 This is because every Sunday of its life, “National Cathedral” is actually a smallish congregation named “St. Alban’s.” It’s just that sometimes thousands and thousands of people show up, like Easter comes more than once a year. My dad was particularly good at that on a smaller scale. Making an event at church that people didn’t want to miss and it didn’t matter what you believed or which church you attended. It was community building, not evangelism.
It’s funny, I’ve evangelized more to atheists than I have to anyone else, and not because I’m trying to change them. I’m trying to change their perception of me. Do you know how hard it is to get an atheist to believe you’re not part of the “What Would Jesus Bomb?” shitshow? I don’t give a shit what others believe, because as Pete Rollins so beautifully said, “A/Theism is the greatest love story ever told, and the truth is in the slash.” (I heard Pete on “The Robcast.”)
I loved the four episodes called “Pete Rollins on God” that they’re the only four podcast episodes on my cloud drive………………….. and absolutely nothing about my rabid love for that podcast miniseries comes from the fact that when Rollins said that quote, it was one of the sexiest things I’d ever heard; he has an absolutely gorgeous Irish lilt. I could listen to him read the phone book. If you subscribe to The Robcast, all four parts are still in the archives.
I feel I have to explain something. By saying that a/theism is the greatest love story ever told, I do not mean to endorse The Crusades, colonialism, white supremacy, etc. I am saying that the question has always intrigued and eluded philosophers and therefore the argument was the only one we studied all semester in Logic I. However, it wasn’t pushing a religious agenda like you’d think in a Texas school. The first half was spent proving God exists. The second half was proving that they don’t.
It is not logically possible either way in the language with which logic is encoded. P and Q statements, all that. Basically, you believe or you don’t. To what degree is malleable, because I believe agnostic is just as valid as atheism, probably because most things in my life are a spectrum. We are not all programmed to see in black and white like Fox News.
Therefore, I cannot offend anyone with my views on God because I am giving the most pious and the most godless freedom to be them. It’s all valid, because I didn’t say that God does or does not exist, because I can’t remember how to do it now, but I used to be able to write it out like math. If my friend Jesse sees this, I’m sure he could tell me, because his dad taught in the same department as my professor. I’m betting Jesse picked up a thing or two about philosophy and the symbols to express it.
Atheists also cannot argue with gathering together for community. To have someone to lean on when you’re in a crisis or whether you’re protesting the Iraq war…. which I did. Many times. If I had been in Portland during those marches, I certainly would have been gassed. That’s because protesting in Portland is, a lot of the time, how we socialize as a church. We have to have breaks between the chants, catching our breaths because we are also walking. That’s when discussion turns to things like Angela’s mom, Grant’s child, Amy’s granddaughter. I don’t know that it helps God to know that I’m praying for them, but it certainly makes me spend time empathizing with what they’re going through. If I can analyze what the problem is while I’m praying, I can help support people through it…….. because that’s how prayer works.
I learned all this when a friend checked herself into rehab and I went apeshit because we were so close. I wanted to be there at every family day, every open meeting, etc. At first it was because I was worried about her. Then, it was “this is better than church.” On the serious. It’s sort of like being at a Quaker meeting, it seems, because there are lots of “sermonettes” and an unshakable commitment to God.
AA is not religious at all. If you don’t have a God, find one. What you need is a higher power, not evangelism, especially if you weren’t religious before. No, what you need is something to get your ego out of the way. You might not be able to believe in a god or gods, but you can believe in your child being your higher power. Your spouse. Your parents and siblings, your co-workers, basically everyone in your life who is trying to tell you that the common denominator is you. If you can’t believe in those things because you’re single, I don’t care if your God is Dr Pepper and donuts.
“Look, I don’t want to get into a semantic argument, I just want the protein.”
That’s because when you acknowledge that you are not the center of the universe and just a piece of it, you become startlingly aware of just how much you’ve touched other people’s lives and how makes you sick to your stomach.
Flat out AA does a better job of healing people than church. FLAT OUT. There is no way for a church to dig that deep with you unless they’re really committed to it. I know you see AA meetings at churches all the time, but that’s because they rent the room in the church so people who aren’t members don’t feel uncomfortable. The only time I’ve really dug deep with other parishioners is when we did a six week grief course together. No one had died, I was just in grief because I’d broken up with Kathleen and moved, trauma jointly and severally. And in fact, most of us were there for divorce support.
It’s where politics fades away, and how we’d solve a lot of problems in this country. If we stopped training ourselves to only show our pretty parts on social media, it will cut down on the amount of time people spend doing it in real life. I honestly think that life has imitated art, because we don’t make time for care and connection in groups. We make time to sit on the couch and look at our friends without checking in. Time goes by and you haven’t responded to anything they’ve sent, because you’re neurodivergent or just busy or whatever the case may be. And then it becomes the guilt of not responding rather than just saying “you haven’t fallen off my priority list. I just don’t have time right now because for as much as I adore you, my X has to take precedence.”
I do not object to those words in the slightest, but I’ll run pretty fast if you don’t get back to me for months, because I want to ascertain whether you’re contacting me because you enjoy me or whether you’ve decided that you needed something from me; you had to reach out in a pinch. If you have contacted me because you only needed something from me and aren’t interested in true friendship, I don’t want to repeat a pattern I’ve had since childhood. I will not let myself fall into a campaign to prove my worth when I’m getting a trickle’s worth of love when I deserve a fire hose, and because of community, to be able to return that love just as “bigly.” It’s always been my “strategery.”
I would bet a great many people in my life wish I was a painter. Do they not know that a picture is worth a thousand words? A gallery of my art might give me more blowback, not less. 🙄 😅
I get out my pain onto canvas just the same. I use whatever language I want because this is not Facebook. This is church. This is AA. This is a real account of what’s happening in my life, what has happened. These entries are as intimate as anything I’ve ever share in a meeting.
I won’t let you go, I’m just waiting to see whether I’m a priority in your life because I don’t always want to be the one that initiates contact. I don’t want to be around you if I always feel like I’m nagging to get a simple answer out of you, receiving you when you show up.
I remember when I wanted that life, because as an INFJ, you know you have a lock on it because you’ve read everything you can find about that personality type and they all end up as social workers, teachers, writers, ministers, and anything else that needs the wisdom of people who have been a thousand years old since the nurse laid their baby in their arms.
However, I am not kidding when I say that the dream died with my mother for two reasons. The first is that I am a completely different person than I was before she died.
I am not willing to go back into “show mode” in order not to get my crazy spatter on other people for the rest of my life. “Show mode” has done nothing for me except to convince people I am perfectly normal….. “you don’t look autistic.”
I don’t often publish anything without running it through Google Translate, because even if I can’t read every word, I know enough to know when Google is being too formal, but I did get the idea right. When I went on that first mission trip, I still knew more Spanish than everyone else, so I was asked to give the closing message. It was terrible, according to my friend Mikal who understood me, but my mother cried, as she always did during my sermons….. however, this time it was just watching my face because she didn’t understand a thing….. except me.
The reason the second semester was harder than the first is that I also went to Reynosa/Progreso for Christmas break, again being immersed, so then my performance was really up and down because I could understand some conversations better than others because I’d had to use those words before. I honestly don’t think she did a very good job of asking me about my trip. I could have told her all about the fact that Hector and Fabiola were getting married soon, that they had been sweethearts for a number of years. Did I want a lemonade?” Etc. I think if she’d ever offered to spend some time with me after school (she flat out told us she couldn’t do that), she would have seen that I was doing fine in her class, but I wasn’t, because I was ACTUALLY speaking Spanish for days at a time with no problem at all. I love and fear Spanish all at once. It’s a much easier language than English, much harder to put yourself out there when you know you suck. However, in Mexico, I’d just gently be corrected and told the right words. I never got a C.
I have also never experienced prejudice against white people in Mexico, especially if you show that you’re making an effort to speak their language and fit into their culture rather than the typical American who expects everything to be the same. It’s the attitude of an Imperialist dictator who loves his country the way people love their mommy and daddy. It can do no wrong because I say it can’t.
Meanwhile, the smart people are talking less and less. The people of color get arrested more…….. and not just because of prejudice. Felons can’t vote, and black people aren’t a monolith but tend to lean Democratic. This is not about locking up black people in its entirety. This is about a more complex, disgusting way to limit voters at the polls. It’s not the whole issue, but it doesn’t hurt. People who are racist are generally Republican, but they weren’t the party that was always known for it. The realignment of the parties started in the ’70s because back then the Democrats were the party of the Deep South. Slowly, the parties started crossing over until the Deep South was solidly blue. Then, in the 80s, the white supremacy Jesus apologizers took over the Republican party, though they were warned. They just didn’t care. They turned their whole party into supposedly loving the Bible and screwing poor people every chance they got.
I would say that this is the thing that should be in the United Methodist Discipline under “incompatible with Christian teaching” instead of homosexuality.
So let’s bring it back around:
I love my country like an adult, because it gives me enough access to history that I can actually have an informed grasp of how this all works. In short, we are all but Citizens of Locker C, yet half of us are begging for Trump’s watch….. old and busted. The Republicans’ biggest problem is that they all know he’s a nutjob and can’t figure out how to get elected without him, so they just clench their teeth and do nothing. They couldn’t find “the new hotness” with both hands.
It’s time to tell them they’re fired because they can’t even manage to finish a coloring book, much less a bill. I honestly think that the reason Trump did everything through executive order is that he didn’t know how to introduce legislation. People have lost touch with the reality of what this job takes, and how it’s not about them. They can go off and have their little cult in the woods, because a man got elected who didn’t know the first thing about government. I doubt he’s been past sixth grade social studies/civics.
This entire essay is all connected, because it’s all about how my faith has influenced my politics for many years. How my young life has shaped me as an adult. How the Trump era was when I finally realized that I was old enough to have an opinion and as long as it stayed in my space, where I owned it and wasn’t hogging a conversation, why not? I don’t want there to be a chance there’s a criminal in The White House, and I am mystified as to why anyone would.
Why were so many people willing to gloss over Trump’s role in convicting The Central Park Five? Why wasn’t making fun of the neurodivergent kid not the end of it? Pretty sure “grab them by the pussy” on tape during a campaign if there wasn’t something about Obama that was off-putting and they just couldn’t put their fingers on it. Racism and sexism won Trump the election, because people have hated Hilary Clinton for some unfathomable reason since the 80s. She started the ball rolling on universal health care with the Patients’ Bill of Rights, so instead of seeing that she started it and Obama finished it, they’re mad at better health care and mad that a woman dared run for office, especially one that was already very unpopular and shouldn’t she know it?
I am going to bet that for 99.99999% of you, you’ll never meet the head of state in another country. A lot of you, if you look up how many passports are active, will never even leave the US to be able to compare it to anything else.
Which leads to things like thinking Obama is not American because most people don’t actively think of Hawaii as a state. It was easy to convince lots and lots of people that either Hawaii wasn’t a state, Obama’s birth certificate was forged on the date so that Hawaii wasn’t a state yet, or forged in the “Place of Birth” field because he was actually born in Kenya.
Trump’s biggest scandal is that he committed high crimes and misdemeanors and blackmailed Ukraine. Obama’s big scandal was wearing a tan suit (I’m being facetious, but still….. Obama’s biggest scandal was blinking on Syria, but he’s the kind of person that knew it and apologized. I can’t imagine Trump knowing himself well enough to know when he owes an apology to anyone. If you’re a narcissist, everyone owes an apology to you.
I also hate broken campaign promises…. just one.
The only campaign promise I’m really pissed about is that there aren’t taco trucks on every corner.
And because I’m not a complete monster, I’m not going to make you sit through all my political opinions without a reward.
It’s a picture of Oliver, who is a dog. He’s dressed up for Valentine’s Day and I asked Zac if I could post it.
This is another one of those rambling entries because I realized very quickly I don’t know shit about sports. But most of you love my rambling, so I know it’s probably okay. 😉
When I was 17, my crush was the goalie of the women’s soccer team at school. We ended up dating for a few months, and then she moved back to Canada, where she was picked for a college team that could get her to the Olympics. There are at least 10 different reasons why she left soccer after that, and I’m not entirely sure I understand any of them. But that’s not my story. That’s hers, and she’s a great writer so I hope some day she’ll tell it.
Yes, I did write her senior English final paper, but she used to have a blog, so I’ve forgiven her.
Also, I got a C on my own English final paper, so it made me feel good I got an A on hers (extraordinarily put upon, but still….). It’s not that I couldn’t have gotten an A on both. She’s neurotypical. She had the best notes ever. All I had to do was craft everything she’d already written down.
On the other hand, when I “write a paper,” I write them just like blog entries…. except I edit. I remember everything I read, so I am putting together sentences on the fly. My interest in a subject is directly connected to how fast I can craft a sentence on it without having to look anything up, because I’ve already read six books or whatever.
That’s why when the subject matter is interesting to me, the writing is tighter. The reason I try to remember everything I read is that unlike my first girlfriend, I do not have enough executive function to be able to pick and choose what I’m supposed to remember.
I inhale it all.
I think that’s what makes my blog entries interesting. I take in most everything through sight, and then write it down. My first girlfriend being a soccer player gave me a love for watching the game, because even when I didn’t understand the rules, I understood watching movement. It’s a ballet where the main characters are grass and blood.
I also think of dance as a sport, particularly those high school cheerleaders with the complicated routines and defiance of physics. In retrospect, I gained respect for cheerleaders by being in the marching band. We were all physically exerting ourselves at football games, and then the cheerleaders upped the ante with their own competitions in the off-season.
I only remember one cheerleader from my high school, JR, and he was my favorite because he was the only guy. Every cheerleading team needs a guy to help with the throwing and the catching. Plus, JR is straight. I can’t imagine it was a bad gig.
Many, many boys in dance and choir do it for the girls, and we appreciate it as long as they’re not creepy about it. I swear to God a tenor could walk into any choir anywhere and they’d be grateful to have him.
To me, singing is a sport, and I think only other singers would agree with me. If you don’t spend time training your body to get a solo-quality voice out of yourself, you won’t. This is because so much depends on your physical strength. You basically have to be able to inhale down to your feet and control the air so that it doesn’t all come out at once. That takes tremendous pressure on your diaphragm and breath control. You have to tighten down some muscles while keeping others loose. It’s a long process, and I think while not as demanding as soccer or ballet, we all learn the same types of breath control for being able to dance, run, and sing.
Getting winded on the field or the stage is inadvisable.
When I lived in Portland, most of my friends were baseball fans. I’ve always been a baseball fan in terms of going to games, but I won’t watch them on TV like my friends will. Without hot dogs and sodas at the ballpark, it loses a lot (to me). I don’t know that the Os would do well, but I’d love to see them against the Astros eventually. Now that they’ve moved leagues, they don’t come to Washington anymore.
In Portland, most of us rooted for the San Francisco Baseball Giants. I can think of one Mariners fan from my whole time there. Also in Portland, I was much more into football because Dana was. She never gave up her loyalty to WAS, but I love Pete Carroll and she respected that. I also love Russell Wilson.
In terms of basketball, I will watch LeBron James do anything, because he walks the walk. He gives so much charity everywhere he goes that it’s inspiring. And the way Dwayne Wade is raising his trans daughter gives me hope for other families.
Oh, and even before I met my first girlfriend, Ryan played lacrosse. He said something to me that I’ll never forget, because I wanted it to be memorable and it was, apparently. He’d just gotten home from six weeks of lacrosse camp (or maybe it was shorter, but I don’t remember. It was enough to completely change his body.) I told him that I liked his new look a lot, but it made him hug different. It sent the intended message. No matter what you look like, I love you, not your body, because he told me that almost 25 years later.
Again, we were unusual for kids. We were both old AF emotionally, so we treated our parents like in-laws from the beginning, us both calling the other’s “Mom and Dad.” I don’t know how my father felt about it, but a man worth paying attention to was paying attention to her daughter…. and being sweet to both her and Lindsay. This carried a lot of weight, and I knew it because she never treated any of my girlfriends that way. It was blatantly obvious.
But in addition to Ryan being sweet to my mother and sister, Ryan had an older brother I completely adored, because he and Ryan were so funny together. Inside jokes all over the place that I could join once I heard them.
Plus, I’ve always been the oldest and it was funny watching him pull the same stunts on Ryan that I pulled on Lindsay….. both before and after.
The funniest conversation I remember between Ryan and his dad was that Ryan had fallen off his bike, and was bleeding with road rash. His dad took one look at him and said, “geez. Is the bike okay? I learned later that being in a doctor’s house shapes you so much. Those kinds of retorts are par for the course.
And Caitlin once got her butt stitched up on the kitchen counter. That was before my time, but a legendary story. I believe I heard it on the night I went to her house for dinner, and we all came to find out that Cait had been picking the crab claws out of the gumbo all afternoon.
Maybe that’s her root. She likes working in restaurants, too. For Anthony Bourdain, it was oysters fresh off the beach in France.
I remember Cait being athletic, but don’t remember her formal sports. But our whole family likes watching the big games, even though we don’t watch every one. I mean, some of them do. Some of them are die hard Cowboys fans, and when I mentioned that I was a Cowboys fan she said the only way she could respect that was she liked Tom Landry. I told her that my memories of the Cowboys were mostly rooted in the 90s and it was okay to move on.
I’ve always rooted for the teams where I’ve lived except for the Nationals, because I don’t like the curly W on the hats. I do have one t-shirt that doesn’t have it on it, so it’s the only Nationals gear I own. I am much more partial to the Orioles, and when I lived here before, I was already a Giants fan. The Nationals are relatively new because we took a long break from The Senators (to our detriment, I think).
That also means that when I lived in Portland, I became a rabid Timbers fan, and even have a picture of me with their mascot somewhere. I didn’t really live in Houston when The Dynamo was established, and because Houston didn’t have an MLS team when I was in high school. I’ve always been a fan of DC United.
Everywhere my friends go that’s overseas, I ask them for a national jersey if they want to know what I want. I know there’s plenty of cheap knock-offs, so it’s not paying DC United prices.
Zac doesn’t follow sports at all, but he’s told me that he’d go to a minor league game if I wanted because he likes it better than MLB. So, we might do it, we might not because it’s a road trip to Hagersville to see the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
The first time I went, I saw them play The Sugar Land Skeeters, and I was just as excited to meet them as I was The Crabs. That’s the thing about minor league baseball. You can get into deep conversations with the players because they have more time to talk after the game and they’re trying to get their adrenaline to come down.
The reason I wanted a deep conversation is that I really wanted to know how Caleb was doing. He lives in Louisiana and commutes for The Skeeters, so they were in Maryland during the height of Hurricane Harvey and he’d already been through Katrina. Because I knew what was going on in Houston/Sugar Land, I wasn’t just talking to him; I was asking questions about his experience from the other side.
My sister was running the relief effort at the George R. Brown Convention Center. He said that because of the touring schedule, he hadn’t even had time to check it out- grateful he wasn’t there and desperate to see if his house and truck still were.
I wished him well, but what even he doesn’t know is that I got a fabulous picture of him right before he hit the ball out of the park, and I took a million to get that one shot from the time the ball was in the pitcher’s mitt. The ball is several inches in front of the bat and he’s in perfect form…. and even if he wasn’t, he still got a home run. I wouldn’t have known the difference.
I think one of the things I really like about Supergrover is that she’s successful at her job (I think) because she played so many team sports as a child/teen. She already had experience with collaboration and not lording it over people. Delegation when you’re the boss is key, because you cannot micromanage the work, you have to hire the right people- the ones that are self-starters and persnickety about details on their own. It’s not on your plate and doesn’t have to be because there’s a special bond between coworkers who are invested and those who aren’t, as in, how fast productivity goes down when the boss has left the office.
That will always happen in top-down situations because the boss is so exhausting. It’s not fun to be micromanaged, especially by a narcissist.
Narcissism leads to very problematic behavior, like blowing up your phone at 3 AM and being mad you’re not awake to serve them. No family thing is important enough not to miss work. Leave your family thing when I need you.
Because in the military and all the intelligence agencies around here, that is true and ironclad no matter how your boss communicates, which is why there has to be a lot of support from your family to do those jobs. There are going to be missed birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays whether anyone likes it or not. The chessboard is at stake, the one thing that really is more important than being with your family and you can’t argue with it in any place, at any time.
Support to all those people is doing enough work on yourself to be a complete person when they’re gone. For some people, that means moving back in with their parents when their spouse is deployed so that they still have a support system. Others rely on chosen family because they live on base, either here or overseas.
According to Jonna Mendez, you have a choice as to whether you tell your family that you’re CIA or not. That’s because you don’t know if your family/friends are going to find it easier to help you live your cover, or whether they’ll blow it. One thing that Jonna talked about in the event for “The Moscow Rules” is that she didn’t tell her best friend she was CIA for 35 years… and that’s because she told her dad and her dad was impressed, so he told all his friends….. the ones who had seen her face, already knew who she was, etc. The more people that can attach those things, the more “in trouble” you feel.
However, with the military and intelligence, you just have to accept that some things are above your pay grade and you can only know so much. Like, “I can call you on a sat phone, but I can’t tell you where I am.” It’s not that the soldier/case officer doesn’t want to help you understand, it’s that they can’t because it would reveal troop movements if the sat phone was hacked.
I do not think that we are preparing for war ourselves. I think that those secrets are being kept so that no one knows who’s watching and where.
I can connect all of this to “Argo,” because there’s an “Argo” illustration for every occasion. To have people know what your face looks like reminds me of that scene where the “face book” has been ripped to shreds, and they get at least 20 people to sit there and line up the strips so they can see the pictures again, trying to stop the houseguests from getting out of Iran. This is because the diplomats didn’t have enough time to burn all the classifieds before the Iranis rushed in.
Let me say for the record that I do not have a dog in this race. Both the Americans and the Iranis have done horrible things to each other. I can understand Iran’s frustration at us getting the Shah out before they could prosecute him. I understand that it put the United States at a distinct disadvantage because we cut off diplomatic relations, closing the embassy altogether at that point.
I believe that’s why people like Tony and Jonna are every bit as effective as sending “a fully armed battalion to remind them of our love.” That’s because we can prevent a lot of boots on the ground with the right intelligence, because then we can go after someone diplomatically/politically instead of starting a war.
It is so disheartening to have a president who’s blind to the plight of Palestine. It is so complex we need to withdraw support from both sides immediately. It’s not our fight. That’s one that’s been going on for too long for us to rescue anyone. The president needs to realize that in their case, the call is coming from inside the house. We can’t police this one. It will work out every bit as well as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and any other conflict we’ve entered where there hasn’t been a thousand years of fighting over that land.
I also don’t know what Biden’s faith is telling him about Israel, and that’s bothersome as well. It is a damn problem, because all the Abramic branches are at war with themselves over this. Christians and Jews want to protect their holy places, and don’t understand that all Muslim holy places are in the same vicinity.
I am not sure that is the message Christianity and Judaism want to spread…. that Muslim lives are worth less.
Because that’s what they’re doing…. like it’s a sport.
In 2012, when the movie “Argo” came out, Tony Mendez was asked to write a companion book to the movie. So many people wanted to know the real story, me being one of them. So, I read that book and then proceeded to inhale all Tony’s other’s….. which were co-written by his wife, Jonna. Tony passed away in 2019, so “In True Face” is Jonna’s first solo work.
My dad sent her a message asking her if she’d sign a book for me and give it to me at the talk, so now I know I will have something to read as I’m leaving. I am picturing a scene in which I cannot put it down and the museum guards are saying, “ma’am…. MA’AM! WE ARE CLOSED.” I hope I’ve managed to get some other people excited about it, too, because I’ve mentioned the book on reddit (over 500 upvotes) and at Zac’s parties (because that’s already an audience who’d be interested in going since they work in intelligence).
I could write about a hundred books I want to read in the future, but this one means more because I have such a personal connection to it. If you’ve read every single thing an author has ever written, it’s an unbreakable bond. Then, you meet the author and it’s a good experience and it adds to the excitement of reading what they do next.
I do for her what people do for me, essentially. I know I have some people that click on my links immediately, and it makes me feel incredible. So, I hope that promoting her makes her feel good, too. If you can’t be in the audience on Mar. 5th, again, at The International Spy Museum, it’s already on order at Amazon, but I don’t think it’s out already. I think you have to preorder. I’m not going to check because if I did, I’d have two copies.
I generally end up buying two copies, anyway, because my keepsakes are pristine (except for “The Moscow Rules.” I was on a plane, so there are pencil marks in the margins on that one. But for the rest, all my notes are digital and kept in my Kindle app and synced to Goodreads….. despite perfectly good hardbacks in my top dresser drawer (in which I don’t want pencil marks). “The Moscow Rules” autograph is too personalized to ever give away. Earlier in the evening, she said something about “maybe we should hire you” when I joked at her about having a sneaking suspicion she worked on “Atomic Blonde.” I said, “that part about ‘maybe we should hire you will live in my memory for the rest of my life.”
So, the book says, “Leslie….. Maybe we should hire you.”
When Jonna talks about an autobiography called “In True Face,” one of the special memories I have of her is that she showed it to me a long time ago.
She’s the real deal. You should go. We can sit together….. because I’m getting a book. 😉
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
In order for this to count today, I have to have it in by midnight. It’s 11:09 PM. So, if there’s a Monty Python ending, it’s because I’ve realized it’s 12:59.
Love this week came in one screenshot:
First of all, I didn’t even know I was building suspense (in my fiction entry, “Words Are Hard, Part I“). The entry is called that because the box of writing prompts that Zac got me for Christmas are packaged as a game called “Words Are Hard,” and that’s the first prompt I picked up that really spoke to me.
Rebecca has been living in my head for ten years now, as have Gregory, Leila, and Kermit. I just wasn’t sure what direction to go with them, so I came up with what I hope was intelligent fiction, because it can’t be accurate enough to be fiction about intelligence.
JL Henry is a relatively new friend of mine, introduced to me by Tyler Moore. They’re both accomplished novelists, and they run a podcast called “The Quill Drivers;” they’ve both been amazing about teaching me tips and tricks to get readership….. and with readership comes the possibility of Facebook paying me. I’ve thought they should for years, but no one asked me.
The blessing of my life was when Tyler said, “join my writing group.” I said, “I’m not a fiction writer. Are there other bloggers?” He said there weren’t many, but writing is writing. And now I have a whole box of cards and a Facebook group called “The Writer’s Forum” that will beat me like a red headed stepchild when I need it.
It’s solid growth in the direction I need to go, and it meant leaving behind some beautiful things. I am in the position of finding the next beautiful, starting with Zac and his box of torture devices writing prompts.
For my readers that have already heard that story, you haven’t heard that I feel loved because my “date” for dinner with my sister got snowed out, so we planned a staycation over Valentine’s Day. So, this year the love I’ll give is the kind you want to give someone you’ve known and loved since before they were born.
Let me tell you. Methodist Hospital never knew what hit it.
Stories That Are All True 