Been Down Hearted Baby

Within the last few weeks, I've been informed that my humble home here on the web has been visited by some members of my family. Namely, my Aunt Dee and cousins Molly and Andy. This is sort of a two edged sword, since I for one am always glad to have new readers, but at the same time I sort of feel as if my little online niche has expanded into markets I hadn't foreseen. All together, I think this is a positive, so I just wanted to give a little "Hey ya'll" to them.

I figured that this would also be an opportunity for me to share a bit of "family lore” that actually did happen to me. This story probably took place when I was 7 years old or so, though I can't be sure of the date. I know that I had to be younger than 10, since I was still in my old house, and I remember being in something like 1st or 2nd grade. Anyways, at the time of this story I was fascinated with valuable coins. I'd found my maternal grandfather's stash of some rare coins and bugged my mother incessantly about their values, origins, and significance. After getting no "7-year old satisfactory" answers, I'd kind of taken up the questions on my own.

While I bided my time wondering these questions, an interesting opportunity came up. I was at the local grocery store (Finest, for you retail buffs), heading out the door when I came upon a free booklet of coin prices. My mother was still in the store, worrying about silly things like groceries, so, since the booklet was in with the auto-traders and 'for sale' paraphernalia, I took it. When we got home I didn't even think of mentioning the book to my mother, since hey, it was free and I knew she could care less about coins.

Thus passed months of blissful coin-book inquiries. I'd get coin offers from rip-off companies in the mail and immediately head downstairs to the play area, under the Nintendo, to pull out 'the book'. All went smoothly for the better part of a year, until one day when my mother got a bit zealous and decided to clear out some junk in the basement. As soon as she lifted the Nintendo up, the words "WHERE DID YOU GET THIS!!!??" flew out of her mouth. I tried to calmly explain that it was a free booklet that was sitting by the front of the store, however my mom would have none of that. She instead assumed that I had stolen this booklet, and, after much deliberation with my father, my teacher, and my best friend's family (no joke), she felt I should go to the store and explain what I had done.

The day of reckoning came that Saturday, when we marched right up to Finest at 9:00 AM sharp. My mother took me to the customer service desk, and, not being satisfied that the woman behind the counter was intimidating enough, asked to see the manager. This gangly unkempt man wearing a Milton-esque short sleeve dress shirt and tie stumbled his way up to the counter. Once he had locked his knees into place for the inevitable conversation with what he thought was an irate customer, my mother simply looked at me and said "WELL?".

I broke down. I had been giving myself a pep talk for this very moment for days and I just broke down. No matter how much I kept telling myself "the book was free!" and "Mom is wrong", it didn't matter. Confronted with an authority figure of that, um, stature, I just lost it. All I could do was cry and mumble "sorry, I....sniff... I stole your book...."

The manager was totally taken aback, having expected to be getting yelled at by my forceful Italian mother. He did the best he could do in the situation, and asked me for the book, which by this time I had dropped on the floor as my hands were busy wiping and covering eyes and nose. When he turned the book around and examined it, he noticed that there wasn't a price sticker anywhere on it, (which was echoed by the customer service lady), so he faked his best 'authority voice' and just blurted out, "since you, um, stole this... um, well our policy is to charge 3 times the original cost. That will be $1.17."

I still have absolutely no idea where he thought of that number, but I do definitely remember getting the extra two pennies out of my coin purse and handing them to the manager. He mustered up a confused "here you go", and handed my free book back to me. It felt like a satisfactory detente had set in between myself and the manager, and I started to breathe a sigh of relief when I heard a sharp "Thank you sir. Rob, let's go home".

I think that that shows a bit of the "good ole' moral conviction" that my mom instilled in me. And heck, even if it doesn't, it still proves another timeless classic lesson, "Never mess with a Sicilian".

Aside from the quick quip about how George Bush looks like a chimp or how John Kerry needs to stop rapping, I've basically stayed out of the political arena on this little blog of mine. I figure that, since not much else is happening in my life anyways, and since I've got the time, I'll put my political views out for all to critique.

First off, a bit of my political history is definitely in order. I voted a mostly Republican ticket in 2000, helping to elect our current president. At the time I thought that some of the cornerstones of his political approach were refreshing, innovative and humane. His issue agenda at the time appealed to me as a return to "common sense" government, one where private organizations could receive funding from the federal government to help them do good, one where public schools would be reformed. Bush wanted to accomplish these goals while keeping 'big government' from squelching individual rights and private sector productivity.

Certainly Bush made sense to me in 2000. However, we now live in very different times, and I refuse to subscribe to a blind allegiance in any politician. Therefore, after a careful and reserved analysis of where the US of A is at now, I feel that I must endorse John Kerry for president.

The reasons though, sadly have to do with what John Kerry is not, rather than what he is. In short, John Kerry isn't George Bush, and for me that's sadly enough to sway my vote.

The swing in my opinion has come from many issue disagreements and political blunders that the Bush administration seems to feed off of during the past 4 years. Foremost in this ménage of missteps has been the administration's handling of the war in Iraq. For starters, the Bush's entire justification for going to war with Iraq has been shown to be fundamentally flawed at least twice. In the first instance, the government's own 9/11 commission found absolutely no credible link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Period. Ever. While some may be able to brush that aside to a faulty intelligence community, I cannot.

Furthermore, the recent Charles Deulfer report clearly states that Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction. In fact, it actually provides a serious case for the success of UN sanctions against Iraq, since the weapons capability of Iraq had been steadily decreasing for the greater part of a decade. Even while in Iraq, it seems quite obvious that the Bush-led forces placed more emphasis on guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry rather than the Nuclear research facilities.

While I can't agree with any of those said mistakes, I could quite possibly learn to cope with them had Bush had a successful domestic record to lean back upon. However, he most definitely does not. One of Bush's biggest faults in my eyes has been his consistent refusal to close corporate tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs to foreign nations. While I understand that globalization means increased competition in every sector, Bush's policies have failed to even level the playing field between American and foreign jobs.

Furthermore, the Bush record on such issues as the environment, health care, and assault weapons control are frankly laughable.

All of these objections of mine, coupled with a sense of arrogance in the current administration are quite scary. As my friend Owen put it, "Heck, if he's acted this poorly in his first 4 years, just think about what he'll do when he doesn't have to worry about being re-elected".

Seriously, I could care less about John Kerry. His Vietnam war protests are a legitimate campaign issue, as is his quasi-pandering to public pressure on a few select issues. But he's got one big thing going for him: he's not George Bush, which means that he's getting my vote.

In uncerain times like these, with the price of oil shooting sky high, ongoing wars, and civil unrest before the elections, I thought that I'd just offer a bit of stability to everyone. Folks, while many things have changed in America, Detroit still sucks.

Yes, in addition to being the fattest American city, Detroit is also where you are most likely to catch an STD. So here's a toast to the home town of Steph Sabo. And remember everyone, take comfort in the fact that, no matter what happens, you probably have it better than anyone in Detroit.

I hope that saying 'you are what you eat' isn't true.

Since I haven't been doing much lately, I figured I'd start an online repository for my quality photos. I have something to the tune of 700 megs of pictures in my arsenal, so I'm posting the pictures to the album in stages. However, feel free to check it out, and I should be dumping some digital display on there quite frequently.

Also, I have a ton of pictures that decency forbids I post, so email me or give me an IM (rplisy) and I can hit you back.

I promised myself I wouldn't do this again

I'm not really sure how to begin this post, but at the same time I know that my initial awkwardness doesn't really make a difference. So I think that, much like a bad CNN report, I'll start with the facts, move to commentary and then analysis.

Jes broke up with me.

There's really no sugar coating this one, or nice little nuanced way to say it. My girlfriend broke up with me after 3 years, 3 months and 7 days of dating. In case you're wondering, yes I did figure out the days total column in retrospect, but at the same time I was never one to not know anniversaries and such.

While I admit that blogging isn't exactly the best forum for this, it is alas my only available option for a few reasons. Namely, I am, for the first time in all of my conscious life, completely alone. I'm not talking about being alone in the sense that I'm single or not dating Jes anymore, but instead the sense that my closest friends that I can find any comfort from are hundreds of miles away. Jade is in Chicago, Owen is in Binghamton, Ariella is in Poland. In fact, when Jes broke up with me, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably in this huge house, totally unable to contact anyone I know. The fact that my dog was the only person I saw that day only compounded my feelings of guilt, shame, and separation.

As to the whole "why" question, I'll try and best approximate Jes' words. She says that she wants to be alone, to be able to be her own person for a while, and that she can't do that while we are still dating. There wasn't anything wrong about our relationship inherently, but more that she needs to go figure out who she "is".

Which honestly makes this all the worse. Jes didn't cheat on me, I wasn't a jerk to her, and it's not like we "just didn't get along". Instead of being able to point to something and say "that's why we broke up", I'm left with this shitty empty guess work. Maybe I should have visited her already, to show her that I am still real, that our relationship is worthwhile even at a distance, that it enriched anything that we did separately of each other. Maybe we should have broken it off right before she went to school, that way I'd at least be able to ask her to look me in the eye while she did this, instead of being forced into participating in those cold, empty silences on the phone.

Add that to the fact that I still love Jes, and I'm frankly just a wreck. Through my now "normal" day everything reminds me of her. I'll drive through my town and see the ice cream shop we loved to go to, the road to her house, or the empty seat in my truck where she would squeeze herself against me on the way home. Heck even in my living room I can think of 20 memories off the top of my head with her. She has basically smoothed over her feelings of guilt on this by claiming that our commitment has shifted, she doesn't feel like she can be fully "into" our relationship as I can, and that all this will go away when I go to Japan.

And frankly, that's bullshit. As Leonardo DiCaprio said in The Beach, "Desire is desire, wherever you go. The sun will not bleach it, nor the tide wash it away." My feelings for Jes have never been dictated by time or distance, and until now she and I have been on the same page. This argument is coming from the same woman who, when I first told her I'd like to go to Japan, said that she'd skip a year of college and move there with me. I can't tell you all how I wish that offer still stood.

I know that I still want to be with Jes, and she's said that she still loves me, but has to decide between being her own person and being with me. What kind of statement is that? In essence it means that she is pretending while either at college or while she was with me. I sympathize with the sense of dualism that us being together creates, but I thought that we had that down by now.

So, now on to the analysis. I'm fairly certain that Jes is that one person in the world for me. She is kind to a fault, witty, sweet to everyone, generous, amazingly beautiful, sensitive, caring, passionate, brilliant, quirky and understanding. Whatever actually happens, I hope that when Jes is done "discovering herself", she realizes that she is all these things and more. I also hope that she sees, like I already have, that our love is, as Hemmingway said, "a beautiful thing, and worth the fighting for".

Leave your comments below, or even better, try getting in touch with me directly, because right now I'm a wreck.