My job is such that I am required to spend long hours at a computer, reading DailyKos.¹ And one day, after having read at least five hundred histrionic, hand-wringing, Chicken Little comments, my "Oh my g-d, are you f-ing kidding me" threshold having been reached and exceeded, I decided to take a brief respite by clicking links in other user's blogrolls. You know, just to see what I could see. Maybe learn a new thing or two.

What I learned from that experience:

* There are approximately 1,000,000 political blogs on the internet
* 999,999 of them are copies of DailyKos
* the same people post at all of them²

Slightly disappointed, I went back to the dk home page and did something I'd been meaning to do for a while - clicked a link that brought me here. Glad I did. It's a nice place, really. I think I just may stick around for a while.




All About Me : Chapter One

I work for a large telecommunications company in the Pacific Northwest. I don't drive a Prius, or drink lattes. However, politically, I am so far left that I make most progressives a little nervous. You know the type: die-hard social activist, proud union member, can say the word "anarchy" without cringing. Yeah, that's me. My brother calls me a "commie", but that's okay. I call him a "jack-boot fascist."³ It evens out. I am also a writer. I've penned poems, short stories and screenplays, and am currently working on my first novel. I have a love/hate thing with writing. I love the physical work of writing, of getting ideas out of my head and giving them a physical shape through words. However, most of the time I'm writing, I'd rather be doing something else - like sleeping (I always get the urge to write in the middle of the night), but it's an obsession. Or an addiction. I can't ignore it, and the times that I've tried, I teetered so close to madness that people got worried.

I have two children: A 6'2" 14 year old son, who was born during a meteor shower, and is one of the chillest, most laid back, compassionate and thoughtful persons I know. Three years ago, he made the decision to "become" a Buddhist. No one was surprised. He also has the distinction of being the one in a family of bi-racial people, who hasn't a single molecule of melanin in his skin. He burns if he thinks about the sun for too long. Them genetics is weird. He and I joke that he was actually switched at birth in the hospital. I seriously hope that was not actually the case, cuz I ain't givin him back. For real.

The daughter . . . ah, the daughter. She's thirteen now and I could write a book about this kid. Maybe someday I will. She's already hard at work at carving out an identity for herself in this cool, crazy world, and I cannot wait to see what the resulting sculpture will be. She is truly a work of art. She's my heroine.

Back to me . . . I was the "weird kid" in school; an honest-to-goodness punk from the original Dysfunctional Family, who spent more time writing and listening to The Clash than socializing, and desperately believed that I would eventually stumble into Narnia. I just had to find the right magical closet. I still cling pretty tightly to that old hardcore DIY mentality, and rage against the machine every chance I get. I'm reminded by friends near to my own age that I was born the year Nixon was re-elected which makes me officially "middle-aged"⁴ and need to get over it. Eh, whatever. My kids think I'm cool. My SO loves me (bless him). I amuse the hell out of myself. What more do I need in life besides $1,000,000 and a car that doesn't break down every five minutes? Nothing really. I'm flush.

And for anyone who might be wondering: my user name (same one I use at dk) is taken from the name of an album by the reggae group Culture. "Two Sevens Clash" is actually a reference to the year 1977. I'm not sure why it's significant, other than that's the year Star Wars was released, and I started kindergarten. But it's a fantastic album, and if you've never given it a listen, I highly recommend doing so.

Well, that's me in a nutshell. It hasn't rained in a whole hour here in Washington, and there's a faint glow in the sky eking its way through the cloud-cover that may or may not actually be the sun. That makes it a good day.

Best regards and many blessing,
Annie


UPDATE - my SO just informed me that 1977 was significant to Rastifarians because Marcus Garvey made the prediction that Africa would be free when "the two sevens clash". They believed that the Rapture/Apocalypse would be in 1977

Footnotes
¹ - Not exactly true
² - A gut feeling. There's some things you just know.
³ - He's not really.
⁴ - this is a scientific impossibility as evidenced by this equation: (x)+ 10 = Y, with "x" representing my current age, and "y" being true Middle Age. As you can see, Middle Age will always be ten years ahead of whatever age I am at the time, and thereby, making it impossible for me to ever reach it.