May You Chase Your Long Weekend Thusly

Short version: Godless Californians? You are on your own.

You know the Rapture is this weekend, yes? Well, there's a pet rescue service, for the animals left behind. And I like animals! So, naturally, I volunteered to help:


To Whom It May Concern,

I am currently a freelance marketing writer and editor, and I am in between projects for the next week or so. I would like to volunteer my services to rescue pets left behind in the Central Coast area of California (below San Francisco, to the west of San Jose) during the scheduled Rapture. I have rudimentary training in giving subcutaneous and intramuscular shots and general animal care.

Additionally, I can have someone (Jewish friend) cover the Fremont area (she has a hybrid SUV, so lots of cargo room), another Jewish friend in the Palo Alto/Silicon Valley area (not sure what her car is, I think it's a Ford Escape, and she's a devoted cat lover), and a few others on which I can call, if needed, which is good, because the entire Bay Area is a lot of area to cover. I would, if possible, like some sort of flag to stick on the front of my car, like the Secret Service gets when they drive the President around. I think it would add gravitas and maybe get me better parking. Also, if you validate for parking, that would be awesome. I can work out a budget for gas and kitty treats and submit as either an excel sheet or PDF. Oh and hand sanitizer for post-reptile handling, which is really just a good general best practice. Not sure if that's out-of-pocket expense. Maybe we could get a hand sanitizer company to sponsor or have some sort of tie in? "Eternal Earthbound Pets: Now with Purell!" You can use that, if you want (but you might want to change the name if Purell backs out. They might get upset if you say they are sponsoring, but they're not. I had that issue when I said they were sponsoring my fifth grader's science camping trip. For clean freaks, they're surprising litigious).

There's a lot to discuss.

Here's hoping you add California to your covered states. If not, I am happy to talk franchise. I know time is of the essence.

Agnostically yours,
Barbara




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Subj: Re: Rapture pet rescue volunteer inquiry

Dear Barbara,

Thank you for your interest in becoming a pet rescuer. And for your marketing ideas.

We have received thousands of applications from atheists across the country and throughout the English speaking world. Unfortunately at this time we are not adding CA to our service area. However, I will keep your email on file for possible consideration in the event our strategy changes. 
 
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I suggest you check out their information to see if your state has coverage. Some of us may have to go rogue on this one, not unlike the Lesser Zombie Apocalypse of fall 2010.

James Durbin

I don't watch American Idol very often. I like that it's family friendly, but watching tv simply because it doesn't have nudity and innuendo seems rather pathetic. But we have been watching, sort of, for this season, in large part because James Durbin has been competing, and we live in his hometown. Dedication due to location.

I have been impressed by his story, his range, and his talent, but I found him a little muted, somehow, and not terribly charismatic during his performances. I liked him, but I wasn't really emotionally involved. And then he was voted off last week, and Santa Cruz hosted "Durbin Day" this Saturday, with a parade, and he performed three songs.

And James Durbin? He completely blew me away.

His voice, live, without the filter of a television speaker, was unbelievable. He also had charisma; he worked the crowd of an estimated thirty thousand people in a raw, disorganized, slightly messy fashion and he came across as funny, and emotional, and real. He seemed to instinctively know how to build the energy. After Durbin sang, and chatted with the crowd, he paid attention to the children who had been there all day, staying to sign autographs for hours.

I stood in the media section, with a few other writers, and with two moms and their profoundly autistic boys. One of the boys was in his teens, with a handmade sign, and he was so excited to be there. His mother and I talked a bit, and she kept grounding her son when he was overwhelmed, and she wept complicated tears the entire time.

There were a lot of stories in that crowd.

Here.

::part one::

I don't know why I have Marshmallow Fluff in my house at all times. I mean, I know why it's here now; I have a child who thinks of it as a major food group, the way I think of coffee. But how did it first get into my house and into my kid? I have no idea. He consumes it, always, as part of a peanut-butter-and-fluff sandwich. Better yet? I only buy organic, no-sugar-added peanut butter.

Yeah. I know.

In Massachusetts, finding it wasn't an issue -- they invented it there, they made it there, they distributed it there. They practically handed it out in street corners. Here in California, you often can't find it, and when you do, it costs a ridiculous amount of money. I was in a small market last night, buying someone a food-related birthday gift, when I came across a shelf with tubs and tubs of Fluff. I brought it to the counter, where the cashier looked at it, and then looked at me. He eyed me up and down. He nodded.

"East Coast." he said. It wasn't a question.


::part two::

The them/us thing is ever-present here. An older man from a few streets away walks past our house as part of his evening constitutional, and sometimes I am outside when he passes, and we chat for a little bit. I asked him, the last time I saw him, about a house on his street where a large number of college students rent, and how that's working out. He told me about a recent large party the kids had, and how he had to ask them to stop yelling drunkenly in the street in front of his house, and we laughed about how it is when you are twenty. I told him about the house we had rented next door to a similar group, and how they had cultivated a huge garden of pot plants, with laminated care tip sheets and carefully oiled tools. It blew my mind, that in the middle of a town, on a major street, people would be so brazen. Just -- where I come from, people are more generally afraid (and anxious and proactively angry).

His eyes were suddenly guarded. "Yes," he said, starting to walk away. "Some people do grow their own."

Oh. I see. A gardener, are you?

Measure K was passed in 2007 - it makes pot possession the lowest priority for law enforcement (which it pretty much already was, with a growing meth problem and gang issues to contend with, some guys discreetly getting baked on a stretch of the miles of beach here is hardly an issue). And, I just don't -- do I care? No. The only issue I have with pot is that it's been difficult to explain to my kids what that smell is, when we're walking by the water. An eight year old believes "weird cigarette," while a twelve-year-old shoots you The Look.


I tell my kids that drugs are illegal and to be avoided, and then we see and smell people doing a drug and now I have an anxious kid who thinks we should be dropping a dime on the elderly professor and his wife enjoying a blunt on the park bench.

All the pot you want (and then some), but Fluff is almost impossible to come by. Santa Cruz is confusing.