Separation of Church and State: Our First Wedding

Here is Josh and Cynthia (our Best Man/Ring Bearer and our Maid of Honor/Photographer) in the car on the way to the courthouse.


Now we are on the way to the wedding, but backtracking because I forgot the marriage license. Oops!


Me and Cynthia at the convenient store waiting for Josh and Leo:


This is a very fuzzy picture of the rings we got at Kay's, courtesy of dad's Kay card. Thanks dad! Owe ya one.....or two.....or....well....let's just say we owe ya! hehehe


We were a little early, so decided to get some gas. Yes: Leo's wearing a "wife Beater." No: It's not indicative of his husbandly qualities!! Leo's whole family does this thing where if they're going to a place of importance, they wait to put their shirts on until they get there in order to avoid the "car wrinkles." It's very practical, I think. I mean, why iron if you're just going to wrinkle up again? Anyway, it's very funny being in the car with more than one of his fam, all in their undershirts!


Our vows included "sharing our worldly possessions," which we thought was rather silly since we HAVE NONE. Mom refers to herself as "bohemian peasant." I liked that so well that I've decided it's an inherited lifestyle trait from her to I!!!! Worldly possessions be gone!!!! I hope our church ceremony lacks that part of the vow. After all, wasn't Jesus like, THE bohemian peasant?!?
Bohemian Peasant Close-Up:

Exchanging the rings........yeah yeah, I know: worldly possessions! So I'm a little contradictory. Isn't everything in life?




The Kiss (flower courtesy of mom and Cynthia.) Side note: isn't Cynthia a good photographer?

One more time in black and white...
Well, really...how could I leave out the sepia?


Judge baker, his wife Sally, and the newlyweds...


I cropped us because, well damn it, we're cute!


One little happy family!


Our hands. Hmmm.


Stoppin' at Leo's mom's....Swedish charm!









After that, we went to the Fairgrounds to eat:

Are you wondering why my picture here is so much smaller than the singles of everyone else? Well, it was in a feeble attempt to minimize that extra ten pounds...you know, that the CAMERA adds on!



Product Promotion
Jingle: "Drink Corona with lime. It's good anytime!"


One of my FAVORITES:



Swinging by Grammas;


Cake from mom. Soooo......I got mad at Leo two days before the wedding, so I..um...ate a piece of the cake. Hmm...does someone eat their feelings? Then the next day, I had to go to work, so I ate another piece. Hey! I needed some sugar!!


Leo's brother Mike came over to have a beer. Here they are looking all tanned and ripped? Is that the word?


Boy oh boy! Just a little close-up for everyone! mmm mm mm. The cake was good, but this husband of mine sure looks yummy!!!


Until next time...and there WILL be a next time in which all are invited to eat, drink, and be merry,
The End

Gramps

The Wall

wal-mart. I hate wal-mart. It is trying to take over the world. It already runs some third world countries including Bangladesh and Honduras and soon will be taking over more of our lives via the mortgage business. Prepare yourselves folks, because soon you will be able to drop off your film and prescriptions while your oil is getting changed, as you shop for cheap burger meat and deodorant before you head up to the counter to get a money order for your electric bill and pay your monthly mortgage. And if you get side tracked in the electronics section and find that you don't have the time to go home to make dinner, you can just grab some Mcdonald's or Taco Bell or whatever other fast grease restaurant they have INSIDE their store. And if your contact falls out because your eye dries out from staring at all the deals, fear not: just swing around the cosmetics section to the eye doctor.

I've been bitching about wal-mart for so long now that I am drained of it. It is really common knowledge that they have very shady business tactics and are responsible for forcing tons of american businesses to either move overseas or go under. Annmarie took an English class last year and had to write a paper on wal-mart. Her professor provided her with a website with a really informative pulitzer prize winning series of articles on wal-mart. Here's the link:

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2004/national-reporting/works/

On top of all the other things wal-mart does that piss me off, here are a few from my own personal experiences rather than from the wealth of articles, news stories, etc. Maybe they're silly. I have been told I am often too analytical. But really, I can't help it. When I don't trust something or someone, I become suspicious. I begin to analyze, to inquire in my mind until I reach a satisfactory answer. It's the overactive part of my human condition. Anyway, here we go:

1. Why are the aisles in wal-mart so discombobulated? The usual mission of department stores is to elicit convienence. You know, the "everything under one roof" phillosophy. Like when I used to go to Ames, for instance, and they had a specific corner for seasonal items that would CHANGE with the seasons: if I was in a last minute rush for halloween candy, I would run through the doors, turn left, jog down a straight-a-way and boom: I was surrounded by candy, face paint, hair glitter and orange porch lights. (For those that don't know, Ames was a popular department store chain that had been around forever until wal-mart spread like the black plague.) When I go to K-mart for socks, I can see the well situated signs posted on the walls or suspended from the ceiling and I know right where to go. Perhaps wal-mart has these signs but I never noticed them. The only signs I can clearly remember seeing are the big yellow "slashing prices" smiley face signs. Maybe their directional cues are hidden behind the maze-like aisles that reach almost to the ceiling. Forget trying to find anything in an efficient manner and definitely forget trying to find all the holiday items in one place. If they're not scattered throughout the aisles, they are floating haphazardly throughout the store on little islands of their own. Convience? No: one must embark on a treasure hunt for the fairy wings, fake blood, candy corn, and the "scary sounds" cd, and just hope it doesn't take over an hour. My logical conclusion to this madness? They WANT you to spend hours at a time in their store. They figure while you're wading through masses of cheap shoes, generic Tide, and slave wage made clothes to find the faux spider webs, you might be tempted to grab the air freshener, fruit roll ups and 50 cent tank top that caught your eye. Their scheme is working. People love wal-mart becuase their prices are SO cheap, and their subconscious mind has picked up on the inconvience factor, so they consciously work around it by making wal-mart a day! Once a month or so, they go to wal-mart to browse and shop, maybe eat, maybe throw on a lay-away. It's smart, really. What a great way to make more money to negate the dirt cheap prices: people go in for the 99 cent 80 pack of Charmin and come out having spent a hundred and fifty bucks.

2. What the hell is up with the senior citizen greeters always killing you with kindness at the door? And the farewellers bidding you adieu at the other door? wal-mart's (I can't even bring myself to capitalize them at the start of a sentance!) tidy response to this is that they are taking the plight of the lower class seniors to heart: in a supreme act of generosity, they have created a wealth of jobs for the struggling elderly, so that they don't have to eat cat food anymore. And if they still must because their pay sucks, at least they have the store discount so they can get 10% off the 19 cent can of nine lives. My logical conclusion to all this generosity? They hire people to "man the doors," to "be on the lookout" in an effort to minimize shoplifting. I betcha during training there is a nice long lecture from some expert on "noticing the signs" and what to do if you suspect that someone is smuggling a twenty dollar VCR out in their baby stroller. Yet another smooth move on wal-mart's part: "Secret shoppers? Who needs 'em? That will just make the shoppers untrusting and resentful. We want them to love us, to love the wal-mart esperience. So let's put an old man with a big blue and yellow smiley face apron in front of the door to hand out carts. And when they think, 'I could've gotten my own cart...it's right there,' it will be immediately followed by, 'oh, but it's so nice that that old man found a job.'" And I'm sure there is someone up in a cushy office somewhere doing the numbers and figuring that the amount of money they save in stolen merchandise cancels out the pittance that they pay the seniors.

3. Why do all the wal-mart flyers feature their employees and families posing as models? Is it really because they value those employees and they believe in a work environment centered around fellowship and loving teamwork? PAHLEASE. Can you imagine how much money they're saving in not paying real models?!? Pretty slick, right? Make their extremely underpaid employees feel like superstars, save butt-loads of cash, and take advantage of some great word of mouth advertising as the employees and families tell everyone they know that they were in the wal-mart flyer, or that their sister was, or that the Down's Syndrome daughter of a friend's cousin's ex-husband was, and everybody's wonderful image about wal-mart the great just keeps getting greater!

It's all one big conspiracy. For a company to feign such generosity and high morals while they bully starving chinese women to sew more and more buttons faster and faster for less and less, is nothing more than evil. They take away american jobs and are glad to do it so that all those people that lost their jobs to overseas factories will be FORCED to shop at wal-mart because their prices are all that unemployment and welfare checks will allow. It works out great for wal-mart. The poorer and more desperate we are, the more money they will make. wal-mart, otherwise known as Hell-mart (with a capital "H") makes me sick. They shall hereafter be refered to as "banging your head against a wall-mart."

Chemical Salad

I know......the picture is impossible to read. So let me break it down. In cigarettes, there are over 4,000 chemicals. Some of the more recognizable ones are:

Butane (lighter fluid)
Cadmium (batteries)
Stearic acid (candle wax)
Hexamine (barbeque lighter)
Toluene (industrial solvent)
Nicotine (insecticide)
Ammonia (toilet cleaner)
Paint
Fuel
Methanol (rocket fuel!!)
Carbon Monoxide
Arsenic
Methane (sewer gas)
Acetic acid (vinegar)

Hmmmm.........Nicotine (insecticide)..........Am I addicted to bug spray? Am I EXTERMINATING myself?!?
I see olive oil and garlic salt aren't listed as ingredients, otherwise I could probably deal with the vinegar, but who tosses their salad with BUTANE & vinegar and a sprinkle or two of arsenic? Not me. Apparently I save that for my lungs. As for the candle wax, I prefer the delicate flicker of the flame on the table as I'm eating. Gnawing on the candle as I await my meal has never occured to me. And the thought doesn't appeal to me now. And I know I'm not the best at sparking up the barbeque, but it would never make me so depressed that I would just grab the barbeque lighter and inhale it. Wait. I AM inhaling the barbeque lighter. Twenty times a day.....more if I add alcohol. Sigh. I guess I AM depressed.

Anyone who knows me, knows that the two chores I hate doing the most are cleaning the toilet and cleaning the car. So I guess my motto is "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." And in goes the sewer gas, toilet cleaner and fuel! Am I making anyone else besides me sick yet?

The pamplet that the state sent me with this lovely information on it, included a quote from a scientist. It said, "noone has ever gotten addicted to cigarettes by smoking tobacco." It's all these other ingredients. Reading this chemical list reminds me of the article I browsed the other day about meth labs. I think crystal meth even had some of the same ingredients. And that's just disgusting. I could go on a whole big rant about the tobacco companies and how they have created all of us drug addicts and how they are still in business because they have bought themselves a chunk of the government, but we've all heard that before.

I've tried to quit smoking a million times and next week I will try again. This time I will refer to my attempt as a boycott: if I can boycott wal-mart (they don't deserve to be capitalized) then I damn sure need to put as much effort into boycotting phillip-morris (again, lower case letters for lower life bastards).

Fellow boycotters! Unite! go here:

www.nysmokefree.com

It's a pretty groovy site...if groovy is the right word for a site full of interesting scare tactics! Scary, yes. But encouraging too.

The Letter

This is a letter I wrote to the editor of our local paper. I had all intentions of mailing it, because when I have something to say, I like to. On second thought, however, with school and everything else in my life fucking up, I thought it best not to piss off my landlady.....then WE wouldn't have a place to sleep. Anyway, here it is for all my friends to enjoy. To summarize, I wrote this letter because rent prices in the north country have sky rocketed to unfathomable heights.


Landlords: How do you sleep?

I remember a time in the not so distant past when rent prices matched income levels: when the cost of rent matched the cost of living in an area so economically deprived as the North Country. Yet, within the past year, the influx of military troops has pushed landlords over the edge. The intense craving for more money has rendered them maniacal in their greed. Our local landlords have become land tyrants. And the rest of us? Mere peasants. I am one of the lucky ones, thank God, whose rent has not risen to unpayable heights, but my quest for a place with a little more square footage will never be fulfilled. We locals simply cannot afford apartments that have shot up from 400 dollars a month to 600 or more! If the situation were not so grave, I could almost find humor in the fact that landlords are unabashedly jacking up rent in apartments that for the most part, are so far behind in upkeep that the rest of the world would consider them “ghetto-fied." The greed is really too loathsome to bear.

The federal HUD program, whose rent price allowances vary based on economy from county to county across the nation, is helpless in providing relief. So, because the cost of living here has remained in its usual pitiful state, if housing assistance deems you eligible for an apartment that costs $400 a month and your landlord raises it to $600, HUD must disqualify you unless you can find a new place in the allowable range, which at the moment is next to impossible. At this point, you’d better either start calling every family member you know to beg a space in their home, or find a suitable tree to build your cardboard castle under.

Allow me to switch into my “the glass is half full” mode and thank the landlords: thank you for “supporting our troops” as they support your savings accounts. Thank you for forcing local serfs like me to consider moving to a more economically friendly environment. And thank you for giving those poor folk who choose to stay here, so many more trees to build their cardboard homes under. That is, as long as those currogated mansions under your lush new money trees don’t hinder your landscaping too severly.

As for sleeping at night? I suppose it won’t become an issue for all you conscience barren aristocrats. With all that monetary support from the troops, acquiring a deluxe, overpriced Sealy posturpedic to support your spines (or lack thereof) shouldn’t be a problem.

Margarita Fiaschetti

The Shoe Fits, But I Can't Afford to Wear it.

Manolo Blahnik sand colored criss cross alligator slide; 2" heel; made in Italy; Price? $1,150.00

The BA degree I have been going to school for 7 years to get; made in SUNY Potsdam; Price? $944.00

The rediculousness of the fact that people own shoes that cost more than the future I can't afford? Priceless