How’s this for fru-fru redneck? Em calls me all excited from Memphis yesterday to tell me how new chick and her idiot fiancé had our 10-year-old daughter’s nails done as a “surprise”. And I don’t just mean a shape, a trim, and a shellacking, I mean honest to god acrylic nails! She’s 10! Hellooooo? Oh, and by the way, (he says to me later) you’ll have to get them “filled in” every few weeks by a manicurist. Gee, thanks for not only turning our daughter into a hussy, but I get to pay for the upkeep as well. Are you freakin kidding me?! No offense nail ladies, there’s elegant and then there’s trashy; on a 10-year-old I see trashy, so sue me. Okay, okay, I get that little girls like to play with fake nails. I, myself, was obsessed with them at her age. But I always got the press on kind that can come off before going into public. Never, ever did my mother take me to get the real thing. Hell, I don’t even know if I asked for such a thing, but if I did then I’m sure she would have found it quite amusing and politely nixed the idea in the bud before even an iota of hope had a chance to form in my adolescent head. So yeah, I’m a bit irritated. Ya think? Pffffft! I dunno, perhaps I’m overreacting (says that incessant little voice of doubt in my head), but if so then who cares, that’s my prerogative. Acrylicfreakingnails, sheesh…

I’ve been watching grown up movies in Em’s absence this week. Why? Cuz I can, that’s why. American Beauty moves me, every time I see it… the whole thing. You know, like the scene just after Shelby’s funeral on Steel Magnolias, gut-wrenching sorrow turned to uncontrollable laughter, though not exactly. In this case its just… peace, simple, reverent peace. Its fantastic really, we should all be so lucky as Lester. He got it, that elusive click as it pertains to everyone differently. It’s out there y’know, that click. I know, cuz I had it once too... You should see some of the looks I get when I call this one of my all time favorite movies. Some people get it, many more don’t. That’s okay, whatever floats yer boat I say. A Mighty Heart was heartbreakingly beautiful. In my self-analytical ways I find great interest in what moves me and why. For those who’ve seen it I’m sure you’ll recall the scene where one of the accomplices is being interrogated, strung up from the ceiling by his hands, partiallly nude. The man is weeping as he is being “questioned”, and then he finally breaks, sobbing his answers to their unrelenting questions. He’s a bad guy; of course he’s a bad guy. Yet this bad guy is suffering inhumanely, and to the point of mental discord. No matter what, my morality does not allow my mind to reconcile the two acts of wrong in order to make a right, period. The scene depicted was brief, and by all rights tame in our post 9/11 society. Yet its briefness and tameness did nothing to quail my horror and empathy for this broken, weeping man. Perhaps its just because I can relate so easily to the anguish of being broken in ways not unlike the torture he suffered. Perhaps I’m just a bleeding heart with too much time to be alone with my thoughts this week. But whatever it is, I feel it, and in that scene, it was too much. Conjured images of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib… too much.