Girth of a Nation

my documentary title for a script I am writing on the Dinning Commons and how greed is making American fat and their crappy mixed market economy which is just really a capitalist economy grr

I am so past over it I have lost sight of it

If I come home at 2pm to find my twenty year old room mate watching re-runs of Full House and laughing, while its 30 degrees outside I am going to cut myself. 

excuse the sanitized writing

Ok the last two posts are just straight copies from a writing travelogue - I apologize, as it is very blain, but I have been too dam busy with school to rewrite these to be more true to form. Excuses excuses

Day 64 - Rescue 911

One morning sometime around 2-3am I awoke in a pool of blood. It took me a few minutes to calculate what was going on I knew I was in pain and I could feel liquid leaving my face I groaned as I felt my body again, opened my eyes and closed them. I just needed to lie there for a while I just wanted to sleep. I heard a girls voice, “Oh my god are you alright?” Normally I would have some dead pan answer but being closer to dead on this day I didn’t have it in me, “Um yeah, I just think I fainted I just need to lie here a while I’ll be ok in a minute” I wanted her to go away. She told me she was going to a call an ambulance I replied, “No don’t! I will get someone to drive me I’ll be fine I just need a few minutes” I thought about who was going to drive me, as I wasn’t actually sure I knew anybody well enough to ask the favour, but I had just watched the film Sicko and a scene had jumped into my head when a lady’s insurance company had refused to pay her ambulance bill because she failed to obtain pre-approval as she was unconscious, yes that’s right folks unconscious. Did I need pre-approval? No one really has or needs health insurance in New Zealand what were the rules? The last thing I needed was a $10,000 bill for a flashing red taxi. I explained this and knew how lame it sounded as soon as it left my mouth the pool of blood growing. She said she was going to do it anyway and left. By this time a small crowd had gathered. The first question camp mother AKA Residence Life Coordinator asked me was, “have you been drinking?”, and as luck would have it I had, but I was always drinking and four beers over six hours is under my normative drinking habits. Nonetheless, I could feel the judgement searing my helpless body. 

The medics arrived and I was filled with confidence and embarrassment as I saw six chiselled good-looking young men, it was just like the episodes of 911 I saw as a kid except better looking (New Zealand had the real problem of people dialling 911 instead of 111 in emergencies). The emergency staff back home had nothing on these guys. “How come six people come out when someone just faints?” I asked, feeling like a complete moron and time waster with my room being within an arms reach and me managing to pass out instead on the concrete tiles a few steps before the carpeted stretch. “We always have a fire truck come out with the ambulance people can be to heavy to move with just two medics” this makes me laugh hurting my face “only in America huh?” and I tell him about back home. He helps me onto the stretcher and trundles me off all dishevelled and bloody in my stripy red pyjamas. I think about old people alone and vulnerable; I don’t want to get old. The verdict after much prodding, drugs, nudity, and tests was a fractured nose and a head injury resulting from dehydration and an on-coming flu. I wait to be picked up by my roommate in the outside lobby its 7am and the only people I see are staff coming to work and a small child with his mother holding an ice cream container under his face with the shock now subsiding I swallow back sobs. I have a painful and vacant few days once more on Vicodin. 

Lock ‘n’ Load G-Unit

In New Zealand to shoot a handgun you have to have a police-issued licence and belong to a gun club so the idea of just nipping down the road to pop off a few shots with an assault weapon was most curious, so much so that it became something I had to do. I swaggered out of the car and into the shooting range office and perused the guns on offer; a 9mm Glock was my weapon of choice, every hip hop artist I idolised as a teen spat lyrics about their Glock, I had to indulge my sick fetish. My English friend James chose a M16 semi-automatic rifle and my other friend an ex-American navy officer chose a Beretta we each bought a box of ammunition “Ma’m, Just take you ammunition and go down to the range you’ll get your gun there.” A cold trickle of fear seeped into me when I realised that no one had asked to see my ID and that not one shred of paper work had been presented. My eyes darted around groping the walls for safety instructions, disclaimers, precautions? Where the hell were all the safety rules? Alarm bells raged in my head. Why is it that I am treated like a visually impaired drooling infant by health and safety government zealots when I want to swim in a pool or catch a bus, but when I want to shoot a deadly weapon for fun I get subtle near invisible safety warnings. Instantly, I was gripped by a more terrifying reality I was entering a rule-less pit of gun nuts - my senses were on full alert. 

We got our guns and after the range attendant walked off he must have remembered and came back asking one of us for a licence, but this I fear was more for the guaranteed return of the weapons than for the screening of age. The attendant asked if I had shot a gun before, I am not sure if it was because I was a female (the only one there) or it was my sheet-white face that prompted him to ask, no was the answer and he gave me a demonstration then left is to it. I couldn’t bring myself to load the gun the image of my face all pulpy with a gaping raw hole through it kept flashing in my head, what if I did it wrong? I left it to navy boy he handled assault weapons as if he had gushed out the womb guns blazing this disturbed and comforted me, yet in fairness to him he was very safety orientated and sensible except when he suggested I practice shooting with my left hand in case I injured my right, “you must know how to defend yourself with both arms in case you get shot” he told me, my view of him as sane was crumbling like the Berlin wall. 

I shot the Glock, my hand would not hold steady, the gun kicked and I shot the beam on the roof, holy shit. My English mate shot the piece of metal that held the targets. I was fraught with the thought of ricocheting bullets as empty cartridges were hitting my body and the constant sound of close gunfire was reverberating in my eyes. I shot the berretta and even managed to get inside the bullseye three times, but it all felt inane I could not bring myself to finish my ammunition nor could I shoot the M16 instead I sat down and watched two middle-aged men whoop and holler as they shot some sort of semi automatic rifle. I felt dirty; it was guilt-by-proxy. I saw a sign on the way out taped to the window of the range booth it summed it up well, it read: “As seen on bumper sticker: It’s God’s responsibility to forgive Bin Laden. It’s our responsibility to arrange the meeting *United States Marine Corps*”. My sick fetish was just that sick.