Sheer Heart Attack

I had to go to Red Cross training today. And I'll tell you what: no matter how high-minded and grown-up you might think you've become, nothing will reduce you to schoolgirl giggling faster than having to lock lips with a mannequin.

It went pretty well, eventually. We had a my house, my rules sort of instruction who mocked me for not looking the in the right direction while I was pretending to listen for breathing, and then picked a fight with one of our supervisors who had the gall to ask why we weren't supposed to check for a pulse. Later I found out see worked for some years in corrections, which explained a lot.

Also, she'd a caught a case of the entitlement bug, if you ask me. When I'm feeling snooty at other people who aren't giving their time to live in poverty in order to help their country, I'm given to thinking I deserve some kind of special treatment. But that's all resentment and other mental avairice. Really, I just love my food stamps. Please don't take them away.

Best part: the Target ad-worthy racial fix of dummy faces. You had to affix them yourself, which led to quite a bit of struggling to assemble the breathing tube apparatus, and also a number of white chests with black faces, and vice versa. In some years, with any luck, humanity will resemble a more streamlined version of this. Supposing we survive.

Speaking of the Red Cross, and on the file of things that might annoy only me: I'm sick to death of the phrase "saving lives" and all its derivatives. Maybe it was that awful Fray song that brought it back into vogue. But I can't stumble over my boots without hearing it anymore. At least two of the radio station we regularly tune at work have in the past couple weeks aired radiothons to benefit kids with cancer or St. Jude's. Even though I didn't watch "Idol Gives Back" I couldn't get away from the promise that my money would save lives. There are several levels to this annoyance, I think, including:

1. I don't like any repetitive rhetoric.
2. I can't stand bleeding hearts.
3. Hunger campaigns address symptons, not systemic change.
4. Madonna really has no pedestal from which to address me about morality.
5. It's another something for people to give their money to so they can go back to not caring.
6. I don't have any money to give them. If you want my hands or my mind, fine, take me anywhere. But if all you want is money, then put my country music back on.

There. No that that's out of my system I can be nice again. Tell me, do you even feel guilty if you change the channel during a charity event or the national anthem or anything. I feel like I maybe used to, but I don't. Just but my country music back on.

The end of Madison living is finally starting to feel close at hand. We're having the open house for our nearly completed project at work at the end of the month, and just yesterday began a new site that's actually in the city, not far north of work or Elissa's apartment. I just threw my name in the hat for graduate housing at MIT, which carries a $250 penalty if you get one and don't accept it. Nothing says permanence like pricing you out of indecision. On the other hand, given the prices of Cambridge apartments on Craigslist, $25o, as they say, ain't shit. And while the dorm rents are pricey by Maidson standards, the actually city apartments are out of this world.

All right. Gotta go find tax info so I can file my FAFSA, joy of joys which that is.