The oregano never tickled my nose, the way it did that Tuesday, when i stood painting, panting for air over the sink.

Everything was broken.  There was no hope of salvation.  The only way to go was west towards a new future; a new beginning.

And so the bombardiers came, God they came, in twos and threes, exploding between the pines.  Sap and sweat mixed.  Thousands were lost, but the needles change colors earlier now. Sunshine, freedom, beer, yet here we are, I ask why, but hey you’re still reading. go figure.

Art is one of those things that is above us. In fact, it’s so far above us that we cannot even comprehend where we end and it begins. Because it begins very, very high up. Like, majorly high. Go see a movie. Go read a book. Or better yet, go create something yourself. The world is too full with the art of other people. The world should be filled with your art. You and I and all of us are victims of our own lack of doing cool shit. Take a look at that sentence again. It sounds sort of lame and weird. But it’s true.

I wise woman once said going to sleep on the beach is like dying with wine.

There is no life in the second generation conversation of our parents’. It’s all about the story that we want to convey and realize that is it all that matters to most people.

Victim is a causal word.  As the wise old Pat Riley once said, “One man’s victim is another man’s lap dance.”  Of course, not all of us have the benefit of being at the head of the most electrifying offense to ever strike the court of the mid 1980′s NBA.  But we don’t need it. 

We are the victims.  We are the predators.

Our existence connotes suffering. With it, nothing but pain.  Without it, it wouldn’t be worth it. 

We create our lives in the white margins – in the space of which we are neither victim, nor predadtor – in the space where we drop our  perceptions of our  causal relation to the world around us. 

It’s the only place anything real ever gets done.

What shall we save?

What we can.

How shall we seek asylum?

As needed.

*this post is a philopsophical diatriabe loosely based on the entire plot of the movie FernGully

in Section 8 housing down the street, to play with the street urchins outside of my apartment, and smile to the immigrants inside my building sometimes.

I understand these people because I am a lot like them. As a woman, I have been through countless struggles to be who I am today. Shaving, wearing heels and bleeding out of my vagina have helped me understand how those people outside my window struggle, and we are all part of a rich heritage that everyone is socially obligated to appreciate.

This is the Victim Culture.

As one of the largest and most vibrant cultures in Western society, their customs and cultural traditions reach back almost 300 years. And unlike any culture on the planet, they are almost infinitely inclusive. Victims come in all shapes, colors, sizes, and abilities. You may not be able to identify a Victim upon first meeting them, because some Victims wear their pride on the inside.

Some Victims may not even know they’re Victims, so it’s best that you alert them if you have any suspicions.

Most Victims celebrate their identities through food, dance, and fundraising for niche causes. Being a Victim isn’t just a status symbol, it’s a responsibility: many Victims give back to their community by supporting a cause, like “The War Against Cancer,” or “Blacks Against Gay Marriage.” Obviously, there is some tension within this diverse Victim Culture, but there wouldn’t be any Victims if there were no oppressors! That would be sad.

You may have noticed several celebrity Victims, as liberal society is now allowing them into popular media outlets. Lately, Celebrity itself has increased the Victim population by thousands. Some celeb Victims include:

Tyra Banks
Fat by Model Standards

Tina Turner/Rihanna
Beaten

Tiger Woods
A Little Bit Black

Lindsay Lohan
Lesbian, Tired of Rumors

Sarah Palin
Special Olympics Spokesperson for Life

Margaret Cho
Asian, Used to be Fat

Susan Boyle
Transsexual

If you are interested in getting to know the culture of Victims better, look left, right, up, down, into your computer, or inside yourselves.

This is a guest post by Sarah Pappalardo.  You can read more of her stuff at http://sarahpappalardo.blogspot.com/

And then I realized… all of you who are reading this are the victims of my poor time management skills!  You could have been enjoying a really thought out piece, something stimulating, perception altering, but I took that away from you.  I sucked those 5 minutes of pleasure out of your life.

Do you feel dirty?  Violated?  Like eating pie?  I’d say I’m sorry, but the truth is, I’m kind of getting a kick out of it!

She said her name was Riley.  I never caught her last name.  Maybe that was her last name.  I wish I had found out.  We got to talking and quickly discovered that we had a good bit in common.  We both had unfulfilled pictorial pipe dreams.  I wanted to be the next Ansel Adams.  She wanted to see the world through her lens.  It was weird, like she knew everything to say to make me want her.  I’d never had an instant connection like that before.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  She was one of the most breathtaking women I’d ever seen.  Definitely top 3.  And those eyes…god dammit those eyes.  They were a shade of green I’ve never seen anywhere else, almost jade.  They were stunning.  Perfect.  She was perfect.

My place was about twenty minutes away.  I didn’t know if she would be getting out before or after me.  I didn’t even notice when the cabby drove right by my building.  She had me locked into her conversation.  I told him to stop about four miles too late.  When he finally turned around and got back to my apartment I asked Riley if she had much farther to go, fully intending to pay the difference in exchange for her number.  She didn’t say anything at first, only looked out the windows of the cab nervously.  She stared at the Jeep across the street for a second.  Then she looked up at me.  With those eyes.  I asked if she wanted to come in.

It was one of those nights where clocks didn’t exist. Time was irrelevant.  Our conversation continued until dawn.  We kept talking about everything we could think of.  She mentioned something about running into an ex at the bar right before our serendipitous cab ride.  I didn’t put much stock into that last bit.  I had fallen victim to her eyes.  She said she felt “right” around me.  I felt whole around her.  We took pictures of each other.  Photographic evidence of the night we both fell in love.

I kissed her.  She kissed back.  We made love with the kind of passion I’d only seen on screen.  It was our own private Before Sunrise.

Next thing I knew, it was Sunday.  I got out of bed.  She was gone.  She’d left a note: “Thank you. You’ll never know how much that all meant.  -Riley.”

I tried calling her.  No answer.  I tried twice more.  No answer.  I decided to give it a day or so.

Monday morning I got a call about a job.  It was a murder-suicide.  Unidentified blonde white male.  Unidentified redheaded white female.

I’d taken forensic photographs for the Mattoon PD for about two years.  In that time I’d taken pictures of everything anyone would never want to see.

But nothing was worse than taking one last photo of those green eyes.

Young black males are victims of a vicious cycle
Women are victims of an archaic pay scale
Gay people are victims of bigotry
Palestinians are victims of misunderstanding
Israelis are victims of misunderstanding
Bill Clinton is a victim of his dick
Hillary Clinton is a victim of her confidence
Fundamentalists are victims of narrow-mindedness
Paris Hilton is a victim of a too-privileged upbringing
The financial world is a victim of a flawed economic system
Barack Obama is a victim of unreasonable expectations
A-Rod is a victim of unreasonable expectations
Teenage girls are victims of unreasonable expectations
Lotto winners are victims of luck
Jews are victims of ignorance
Musicians are victims to the internet
Michael Vick is a victim of a lack of stimulation
Liberals are victims of conservatives
Conservatives are victims of liberals
Designers are victims of progress
Britney Spears is a victim of flashbulbs
The public is victims to the decisions of their governments
NPR is a victim to listeners who don’t donate
My roommate’s dog is a victim of not being able to pee when he wants
Creators are victims of subjectivity
The pork industry is a victim of the H1N1 virus
Forward-thinkers are victims of backward-thinkers
New Yorkers in the summertime are victims of New York Summers
Coldplay is a victim of one derisive line in The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Michael Phelps is a victim of being 24 and liking weed
US Soldiers are victims of a nation’s narcissism
The young are victims of no money yet
The old are victims of no more youth
Terrorists are victims of blind hatred
The New York Times is a victim of a new generation
Whales are victims of giant Japanese boats
Gary Cole is a victim of typecasting
The future generations are victims of the generations before them
I am a victim of my own inadequacy
The working man/woman is a victim of the grind
Consumers are victims of superfluous choice
Workers are victims of the clock
Human beings are victims of humanity

They live in a small house in the woods of Western Canada that’s covered with shrubbery from the years and years and years and years of neglect. They moved into the cabin in the summer of 1871. They were newlyweds then and Tim had a red shirt made by his wife, Vicky.

It is now 1956. They are old as bumble bees, but continue to tend to their beloved home. Tim does the landscaping and the trout fishing and Vicky does the berry picking and the bird catching. Tim loves sparrow — undercooked and gnawy with a dash of salt and a sweet raspberry glaze. Vicky’s favorite is owl because of the noises they make in the dead of night.

They are known by the neighbors as strange and unfriendly.  Partly due to their inability to die, but also due to the incident in 1888.

No one knows what happened. But everyone knows that something happened. When asked, their faces turn white with a slight tinge of green. The green may be due to the remaining effects of the illness of 1910. But the white is most certainly due to the shock and fear of the memory. Neither will utter so much as a quiet squeal if 1888 is brought up.

Rumor has it, someone was slain with an axe. Then painted blue with a dye made of blueberry and thyme. Then covered with squirrel hides and buried behind the shrubbery that engulfs the east side of the house and crawls ever so slowly across the roof towards the west side. But no one has anyway of knowing for sure what happened in 1888 with the axe and the dye and the squirrel hides behind the shrubbery of Vic and Tim’s cabin.