extremis malis extrema remedia

My stomach is twisting in knots right now. I had actually been preparing myself for the notion that this could be a really great Thanksgiving considering I will be able to watch both a Dallas Cowboys and Texas Longhorns football game on the same day for the first time ever. But now I find myself popping an extra Xanax to help calm my nervous stomach after getting the tragic news that a friend lost his parents last week in an apparent murder/suicide. This compounded with this past weekend’s news of a Florida teen who took his own life live on the internet with viewers watching, even taunting and egging him to do it, that just disgusted and disturbed to me no end. I know a lot of things are really hard right now but I would like to think there is more hope than is currently being reflected by such terrible events.

I applaud President-Elect Obama’s concern about the auto industry’s ill-prepared financial bailout package, but then yet another banking giant, Citigroup, gets handed $20 Billion dollars in relief over the weekend without even a blink of an eye. And I can’t but help to go back to well each time I think about our struggling economy and say that it’s an absolute travesty that we are still spending millions upon billions of dollars on failing foreign policy initiatives, including fighting a war in a country that currently has an economic surplus of over a trillion dollars. That’s not just money going down the drain, that’s lives being lost. Lives of American citizens who have volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way to protect their country, but who’s protecting them when they need it?

I overheard a co-worker recently talking about how she didn’t understand why there are so many commercials promoting foster care on television right now. She went to make some sort of blanket statement about how our country’s foster system was a joke full of abusive and greedy people. I wanted to ask whether she actually had any real experience or insight to as why that might be true or if she was just speaking from total ignorance. I also wanted to tell her that while there may be those who have taken advantage of the foster care system the current highest growing population of homeless in this country are children. So children are now both #1 in the categories of poverty and homelessness in the greatest country in the world. Ain’t that something to hang our hats on?

OK. Three paragraphs of venting are enough. I am still very happy to report that my good friend Jenny and her boyfriend Faust are going to be welcoming their first child together this spring. Jenny is going to make a wonderful mother. And to make a completely inappropriate comment, I have to say that it’s going to be some serious Salma Hayek effect going on. Come on, I had to end on a joke, even one in bad taste.