Michelle's House of Horrors

Lately I have noticed that any of my posts that are even remotely sexual get a lot more hits than other posts.

The exception? Posts about football.
Football gets more views than anything.

This will surprise no one.
The sex part, I mean. Everyone knows how popular sex is. The football part is a little surprising to me, but I suppose it’s America. Football is the new American arena sport. Instead of gladiators, we have young men in tight pants and shoulder pads. Instead of maces and tridents, they have footballs. We aren’t allowed to feed anyone to the lions, so we let these highly trained young men give each other traumatic brain injuries in the name of entertainment instead.

Uh…yeah. I’m a college football fan. Cognitive dissonance much?

A little bit, yes. It’s really hard for me intellectually to justify throwing a bunch of young men onto a field and letting them hurt each other for entertainment. Even if the injuries are not the main attraction, they are still a frequent side effect. The pros are well paid, but there are an awful lot of high school and college players getting injured who never make it to a pay day.

Scholarships? Sure. That’s a very fair trade for playing a game, but the diagnosed and undiagnosed permanent injuries give me pause. Especially the brain injuries. How much brain damage does a scholarship compensate for?

If the rate of injury was as high among academic scholarship holders, would most of them accept the risk?

Is there an acceptable rate of possibly undiagnosed and indiscernible potential future disability for high school and college players? Is it ethical for an institution with the stated purpose of eduction to expect recruits to sign off on it?

At what point does it become an issue for OSHA?

I wonder.

I have yet to actually meet anyone in person from the online dating site I’ve signed up for. One near miss.

What has happened is that I have gotten a lot of messages about my looks. Badly spelled messages. There are a handful of people who I will possibly meet at some point.

And then there are the ones I really wouldn’t be interested in dating, but I have had some great talks with them online about their gender roles and sexual identity.

A lot of us think of sexual preference as an either/or. You like men or women and pick one. You are the gender you were born with, and you stay with that gender. For many people neither their gender identity or their sexual preference are that clear.

There is a whole Queer world out there that a lot of people are unaware of. Or make fun of. I think of it as just another thing in life that is interesting and complicated. It’s a little hard for me to relate to because I can’t imagine wanting to be anything other than female. I haven’t ever wanted to be male. I love men, but it’s not who I want to be. It must be tremendously difficult to feel like you were born with the incorrect gender.

OK. I am falling asleep. This is no time to write.

My social life and writing are all out of balance. I need to try to do better.
Good night!

The girl stood on a rock on the edge of the river and wondered.

What if she fell in?
What if a fish jumped up, and she caught it with her bare hands?
What if someone pushed her in and she drowned?
What if she dove in head first and it was too shallow and she broke her neck and got paralyzed and she had to be in a wheelchair and people had to do everything for her, even holding her books and turning the pages for her?
What if she skipped a flat stone halfway across the lake?
What if she sat on the rock with a book and read in the sun?
What if she saw a merman?
What if she looked down into the water and saw someone looking back up at her?
What if there was a dead person stuck under the rock and he was all decomposed and the fish had been eating his body and he popped up at her like the dead guy’s head in the movie Jaws?
What if she stepped off the rock and the lake was really solid and she could walk all the way across?
What if she stepped off the rock and suddenly a set of gold steps appeared leading down into the middle of a whole underwater world but somehow she could still breathe because she has been stolen from them as a baby and that is why she never quite fit in up in the world above the water?
What if she held up her arms like Olympic divers do and all of a sudden she was on the high dive platform and she did a perfect dive and the U.S. team won a gold medal?
What if she turned around and the boy she loved was there and he kissed her right in front of the whole school?

And then her mother called her over to have dinner.