"I knew something was wrong with me that summer, because all I could think about was the Rosenburgs and how stupid I'd been to buy all those uncomfortable, expensive clothes, hanging limp as fish in my closet, and how all the little successes I'd trotted up so happily at college fizzled to nothing outside the slick marble and plate-glass fronts along Madison Avenue."

--The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Coins.

I don't approve of the new $1 coins.

I think putting the faces of the presidents on the coins is redundant. I don't have a problem with honoring some of the presidents, but half of them are worthless and others have already been honored! Why can't women or minorities be on the coins? Why do we have to keep honoring dead white men? Why hasn't MLK Jr.'s face been put on money yet?

I wouldn't even have a problem with white, male authors or scientists or doctors being honored--as long as women and minorities were honored, too. Just no more dead presidents!

And these men are replacing a women's suffrage pioneer, Susan B. Anthony, and an American Indian woman, Sacagawea. No.

I don't like the hook of this article, either. "The U.S. Mint is hoping that Martin Van Buren and Millard Fillmore can do what Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea couldn't--get Americans to use dollar coins." The coins did not fail because of who was on them!

I will take the Bill Clinton coin, though. But apparently he has to die before he can appear on the coin, so let's not hurry that, okay?

Ugh.

1) I read this blurb for a book this morning: "When America was attacked on 9/11, its citizens almost unanimously rallied behind its new, untested president as he went to war." (Blurb for The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich, which actually I think I might be interested in reading, as the rest of the blurb reads "What they didn't know at the time was that the Bush administration's highest priority was not to vanquish Al Qaeda but to consolidate its own power at any cost. As only he can, acclaimed New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, delivers a step-by-step chronicle of how skillfully the White House built its house of cards and how the institutions that should have exposed these fictions, the mainstream news media, were too often left powerless by the administration's relentless attack machine, their own post-9/11 timidity, and an unending parade of self-inflicted scandals.")

2) I heard someone remark on The View (shh!) yesterday about how everyone is acting like they were always against the war, but how this commenter remembered how everyone was for it at the time.

What the hell. Not once did I ever support George Bush. 9/11 did not make me rally behind him. I was always against the war. I got harassed a lot for it, too. And my parents were never for either, too. And some of my friends were against it, too. So I don't know what the heck is with this belief that at one point in time everyone supported Bush and/or the war in Iraq. Because there were always people against both. We were just made to feel like second-class citizens at the time. But we were there. So no. Don't act like everyone is against the war now just because we're sick of American soldiers dying, because now it's the popular belief, because we're "losing," because we finally got smart, etc. That's just insulting.

Midterm Election.

Yea, my personal ad has been filled!

How thrilled am I with the election results? I feel like the rug will be pulled from underneath me any moment. I don't think I've ever experienced my candidate winning before! What a strange feeling, to be ahead. I'm so excited about Strickland and Brown. The US will prob. be in gridlock for two years, but at least that means Bush won't inflict more crap on us!

I can't wait until January for the smoke-free bars and restaurants!

A new woman Speaker of the House? I loved Pelosi long ago.

Some annoying correspont on CNN this morning said that the Democrats will have a lot of "rhetoric" and no action. Okay. It's not "rhetoric" if a group actually tries to accomplish something but CAN'T because they don't have a 2/3rds majority to override any Bush-veto.

And may I just say that I told lame duck Mike DeWine back in September 2005 that he should look for a new job?

That journal entry:

americablog.blogspot.com, my favorite political blog, issued an Action Alert on the Dirty Bomb 54, 54 US Senators who "KILLED legislation establishing an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate what went so horribly wrong with Hurricane Katrina."

I called and e-mailed my senators, DeWine and Voinovich, the shits, last night. I called again this afternoon because I wanted to talk to a real person.

A DeWine staffer sent me to another staffer, the one "who handled that." But that person wasn't in, so I could only leave a message. I said how disappointed I was, how 76% of Americans support it, as well as 64% Republicans, and how the panel the Republicans wanted wasn't bipartisan if Republicans outnumbered Democrats on it.

And then I wished DeWine good luck on finding a new job in November 2006, when we vote him out of office.

I then called Voinovich. The staffer gave me this reason as to why Voinovich voted against it: "it was illegally attached to an appropriations amendment." The staffer called it a "technicality."

I told him I didn't buy that reason. I then asked, if that were the real reason, if V. was going to look into an independent investigation in the future. Staffer said V. hadn't taken a position yet.

I told him about that 76% of Americans supported an independent investigation, including 64% of Republicans.

Staffer: "I'll be sure to pass that information on to him, miss."

I said (sarcastic), "Yeah, I'm sure you will."

He then hung up on me.

Go me!

"Letters to God end up in ocean, unread"

Letters to God end up in ocean, unread

This story made my heart hurt. I think it's beautiful and sad. I think someone should compile these together and publish them—with the writers listed as anonymous, of course.

He opened a few with his son, Rocky, on the beach. The first few were humorous.

"I'm still praying to hit the lottery twice: first the $50,000," one man wrote. "Than after some changes have taken place let me hit the millionaire."

Another asked God to make a certain someone "leave me alone and stay off my back," while still another asks God to calm a woman who "call the Internal Revenue on me."

One woman complained that her husband always talks about sex, and another writer anonymously dropped a dime to God on someone cheating on his wife, complete with dates, times and locations.

But those, Lacovara soon found, were the exception.

Many more were written by anguished spouses, children or widows, pouring out their hearts to God, asking for help with relatives who were using drugs, gambling or cheating on them. One man wrote from prison, saying he was innocent and wanted to be back home with his family. A woman wrote that her boyfriend was now closing the door to her daughter's bedroom each night when it used to stay open, and wondered why.

A teenager poured out her heart on yellow-lined paper in the curlicue pencil handwriting of a schoolgirl, begging God to forgive her and asking for a second chance.

"Lord, I know that I have had an abortion and I killed one of your angels," she wrote. "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the mistake I made."

One unwed mother wrote that her baby was due in four weeks, and asked God to make the father fall in love with her and marry her so the child would have a father.

However, I don't like how the man who found the letters is exploiting them by putting them on Ebay.