I take Oceans for Granted

I was about 8 years old the first time I dipped my toes in the surf at Ocean City, NJ. I was something like 32 when I floated my body on the warm, sweet water of the Mediterranean. To me, the idea of coming out to an ocean and flipping my shoes off and getting in there isn't a big deal. I'm able-bodied and car-possessing and I swim like anything. I was ten and learnt how to really do laps in a rec center public pool. My folks took us with hoagies and sodas on ice up to Lake Nockamixon to get some really quality pool time in from the time I was ten to teenage. My dad is a good diver--although he can't see shit in water since he can't wear his glasses--same as me. I am naturally buoyant, what I find hard to do is get under the water. I float like an Ivory Soap--good clean fat quantity, me.

When I am by an ocean, I feel at home. My ancestors were probably North Sea fishermen. I've long thought my body was fat to keep myself buoyant in North Sea Water so I could survive a dunking and live to produce another generation of floating fisherfolk. 

The idea that anyone might live just so close to water and never be swimming seems tragic to me in a way. I read Elaine Morgan regarding aquatic apes and decided it made sense.

To me, seaside is Mecca. Visiting the ocean is necessary. I love being on and in the water. I am both delighted a century-old lady got a chance to see the ocean, and sad this is probably her first and last time.

Sting and Lady Gaga--King of Pain

You all probably realized I love the hell out of Lady Gaga, but I also love Sting, like I can not adequately express. Coming across these two on Youtube  made my evening, people. Made it.

Knowing that Robert Downey Jr. who in roles like Tony Stark and Sherlock Holmes and Chaplin pretty much comes off as totally brilliant, himself, and not just playing brilliant people, is also a really good singer, is a nice lagniappe to a fun Youtube indulgence. Also, for some crazy reason I dig hearing Tom Hiddleston rap.

Bill Cosby is a Problem

I'm from Philadelphia and Bill Cosby is a huge part of my experience. "Fat Albert" was as much a part of my childhood as "Super Friends" or "American Bandstand". I saw the HBO specials and I watched "The Cosby Show". I grew up with "Picture Pages" and in a world where comedians found having a Bill Cosby impression up their sleeve de rigeur.

In a way, I have not ever not known of Bill Cosby and liked him as a kind of father/teacher figure. He has been a person who succeeded in my city, a person who attained his goals mentally and intellectually. A smart man. A funny, successful actor. A pillar of our regional community. A supporter of athletics and learning.

His delivery as a comedian and ability as a storyteller influenced me a lot. He did not need to use blue language, because he could make a sound or a facial expression that said a thousand things more than a bad word would.

But I believe women. I do. I have to. Women are abused by rich men and poor men, by nice men and mean men. It's always their word against the other person. But when there are so many women, fifteen, now, that have come forward, it really becomes difficult not to see a pattern, and a bad one. Fatherly, professorial, funny, gentle, interested, gallant, Bill Cosby, who I have liked for all my life, did bad things to women. I liked him, and he was not a good person to those women. He is a person who I felt so sorry for when his son was murdered, and whose wife I wanted to cape for when people questioned her for thinking out loud whether racism killed her boy--

People gave her grief for wondering if racism was why her child was victimized. They seriously did. People with no authority at all wanted to question her lived experience as an educated aware black woman with a dead son. And I would still hit anyone who wanted to grief her for that line of thought.

But I can't stand up for Bill Cosby Himself. After hearing all the stories, I can't. I believe women. so I can't. I can't see how this many women are liars, and their stories are so similar, and plausible.

And I have all the shade for Don Lemon, who seriously asked a victim why she didn't bite an irrumator on his cock for violating her mouth. Because there is no instinct for a drunk and drugged person to do that? Because hard dicks are actually hard? Because when it's shoved in, you open so you can breathe and not feel sick or gagged? Because she did not want a tall, athletic man to smack her teeth in?

I hate like hell to totally understand that this shit was okay with the network PTB--but that's what I think happened. They understood Bill Cosby was a sexual sadist liability, and they were making a shit-ton of money. And that money made the bad stuff ok.

They did not get it is never ok. It is never okay to accept that your star is a rapist and let him go ahead and keep raping. I mean seriously? WTF?