Skynet & You: Taking the Required Steps to Save You & Your Planet From Annihilation

How prepared are you for the Rise of the Machines? Have you been neglecting your Skynet preparedness testing? If so, I recommend employing my simple process that occurred at 5am this morning.* [See Disclaimer]

1. Fall asleep with the laptop open in the room farthest away from you as possible.

2. Train your pet cat/dog/boa constrictor/turtle dove to find the obscure accessibility settings on your laptop. Let them turn on the "Dictation" feature using whatever set of random commands makes that happen when using a laptop as a place to take a siesta.

3. Insure that the laptop is bluetooth connected for sound to your wireless Bose system that has the volume turned all the way up from your party the previous evening.

4. At the least advantageous moment, in the deepest part of your sleep, have your pet figure out the longest work item every written. Let them arrange it so the dictation feature will begin to read it, in creepy male robot voice, with the amp turned all the way up to 11. Between the multiple different locations of sound it appears your ENTIRE HOME IS SPEAKING TO YOU ABOUT SOME REALLY WEIRD SHIT BUT YOU CAN'T MAKE IT STOP BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT'S COMING FROM.

5. When you process that you are under attack do the logical thing. Begin to cry and believe you are about to be stabby rape murdered.

6. Run out of the house but DO NOT turn off your house alarm, thus setting that off as well, adding to even greater levels of sound violence.

7. Stand in your yard, in the freezing cold, in lingerie, and look at your home with a combination of fear and a face that says "How could you betray me like this house?"

8. At this point you are finally awake enough to realize there may be other reasons why this is happening and there may not be stabby rapey murder in your future afterall.

9. Say hi to your next door neighbor, who is now unwittingly in on the preparedness drill, thanks to your house alarm.

10. Begin to think logically about how to make this stop. Think "I should just flip the breaker since that would shut everything down." Yes, this is an excellent idea about how to shut down things that run on battery life when they are unplugged!

10.5 Make a mental note to reset every clock in the house. Way to go, genius.

11. Yell F*CK!!! very loudly because that this point if there isn't going to be a stabby rapey murdering then this whole thing has really been a waste of valuable sleeping time.

12. Finally do the variety of steps it takes to shut this whole mess down. Go to Torchy's to reward yourself for your complete lack of calm or critical thinking skills with a breakfast taco. Why is a taco the reward? Who are you that you would ask such a disrespectful question? Tacos are always a reward. Sheesh people...

13. Repeat process at precisely the time in which you have forgotten everything you have learned here and must start over.

[*Disclaimer: Void where prohibited. Use as directed, but only if it's directed by David Fincher. Linda Hamilton's ripped upper body not included except in the Sarah Connor expansion pack. Illegal in the lower 48 states except Idaho where you can pretty much do any damn thing you want up in No, U Da Ho. Do not consume delicious Torchy's Breakfast Tacos until after consulting your physician to determine if you are healthy enough for sexual activity. In the Criminal Justice System the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. If you find you have increased gambling and sexual urges consult your doctor on how to improve your Rocking the Fuck Out skills and quit looking the gift horse in the mouth you selfish windbag.  And most importantly let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with Steve.] 

Pennies, Fists, & Spit: A Band Name for Bullies

Poster for new documentary about bullying.

“The violence between women is unbelievable. Women try to make each other crawl so that their knees are bleeding.” - Tori Amos

The summer before my freshman year in high school I got on the bad side of some bad girls. The reasons were obscure except a senior boy liked me and not one of them. Thus began 3 years of unchecked aggression that would profoundly change me and also leave me with PTSD over $0.14 and pay phones. Loose change still freaks me the hell out.

High school cafeteria food is always a risky endeavor, but for me it included a physical and mental endurance test. Every day those girls would haul themselves up to the lunchroom overlook area, bring their bags of change and other loose metal objects, and spend the lunch hour pelting me and hurling obscenities.

If you sat within 10 feet there was a possibility of a chipped tooth from a stray penny in your baked beans or an imprint Abe Lincoln in your forehead. Not wanting to become collateral damage people left me plenty of empty space most of the time to stretch out. This is also why, as an adult, I have no problem eating out alone. If you can consume a soy pattie while being called a "stupid worthless bitch" and dodging projectiles you can easily eat Filet Oscar around a pleasant server. Also adults generally do not carry backup debit cards specifically for pelting. Technology win.

Pack of Pathetic
The leader of this collection of fighting, spitting, classless Mean Girls was named Kelly. Kelly was a very big bleach blonde with an attitude and an automobile. The law persisted in letting her drive it in spite of my protests to the contrary.

Kelly's hobbies were french braiding her hair, wearing the same cut off shorts every day, eating, plotting new ways to make me commit suicide, more eating, assembling a gang, and combining verbal and vehicular abuse into an art form. Her most important quality was to rarely do the dirty work herself, so she inspired complete strangers to hate me and hurt me usually thanks to a spectacular combination of lies and bravado. Not even my parent's home was safe from her minions. For a virgin I was apparently having a blast Super Sluttin' it Up. Our garage door became a billboard to my achievements in being a garden implement and/or prostitute.

As time progressed she and her minions realized that the loose change racket, screaming threats out the car window, and garage door defacement wasn't really affecting me anymore. I had stopped crying all the time because it showed weakness and it's not a lot of fun flicking metal at people who ignore you. The Pack of Pathetic were going to have to up their game. In the words of the Poet Laureate of Australia* Miss Olivia Newton John, it was “gonna get physical”.

There was a period of time when spitting in my face was a thing. Then tearing my clothes. Then yanking a decent sized lock of my hair out. I'd get surrounded by a circle of girls and have to push and fight my way free. By junior year I was Jean Claude VanDAMMMN girl! in physical self defense skills. My Super Hero powers were evolving when a girl in my class went to punch me while I was on the pay phone with my parents. In a move I like to believe was really Matrix-y I ducked, she missed my face, and crashed her fist directly into a brick wall. It shattered her arm. I wonder if we are going to talk about that day at our class reunion, if I don't skip it again like I did the last two.

Repression is the New Black
I don't remember all the details of the litany of increasing cruelty. In fact, parts of my bullying experiences were so painful the memories have just faded to black. If you work hard at repression it is possible to bury things so deep they require hypnosis or psychotropic drugs to excavate. I still have photographs my parents took showing my face torn up after another set of nails or another fist. I see it but she looks like my sad and scared little sister, not the strong take-no-prisoners woman I have become.

I'd like to say it is beyond me. It really isn't. My relationship with women is horrible. I haven't been able to trust very many women in my life to be supportive instead of conniving and exploitive. Women can still bully as adults; but not with pennies, spit and fists.

Truthfully, this was hard to write. Most people tend to see their pasts as happier than reality. I've looked at my childhood through a lovely dusty rose filter since I left a year early for college at 17 and have never acknowledged the pain of those years. But bullying and the effects shaped virtually every important decision in my adult life in some form; whom I love, whom I loathe, my career choice, my dating life, friendships and how I feel about myself. It's mostly been a fantastic life, albeit one simmering with a lot just under the surface. I'll confess to having a few too many glasses of champagne and a few too many defense mechanisms in an attempt to wash it away or mask it from view.

I woke up this morning looking like a bad soap opera actress with tears everywhere. I dreamed I was in between two men in my present life that I love very much. We were seated in a movie theater watching scenes from that period. I tried to explain to their shocked and disappointed faces that my life had been complicated and I unintentionally polarize people. It was too late to take back what they knew. It's also too late for me to take back what happened. The only thing left is to own it.

It really does get better...or maybe you just get better at handling it. And happiness is certainly the best revenge.


* Factually inaccurate, but you just know Australians feel that way.

So Many Names, There Is Barely Room On the Walls Of The Heart

"So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart." 

- Billy Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States of America

His voice was barely audible. If it were not for the microphone stubbornly stuck too high for a man of his diminutive stature he may never have been heard at all. The first few sentences finally floated from the podium over the clink of empty champagne flutes on silver trays. Quiet soaked into the cavernous corners of Manhattan's Cipriani.  

There is a difference in the sound when people speak about that which causes them great grief, and the recognition of that difference gives pause to everything else around it. Grief seeps through an under amplified microphone, through a language barrier, past economic dividing lines, political persuasions, generations and educations. The joys of life are vast and unique. They may be celebrations of birth, life, love, success or hundreds of other causes. Grief is nothing more than one simple catalyst. Loss.

Robert Peraza kneeling before his son's name.

His name is Robert Peraza. He spoke of his son Rob, a handsome 30 year old commodities trader for Cantor Fitzgerald on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Rob's picture fades into a photograph of Robert Sr. that was captured unbeknownst to him when he found his son's name at the memorial.

Through a thick accent heavy with sadness he cried "I LOVE THIS COUNTRY." Then he explained how he left Cuba for the United States and built a quintessentially good American life for his family. But it was so important for him to help us understand that we all as Americans share in his grief and that profound sense of loss that unites us. We may not have directly lost someone we loved on 9/11 but we lost something we loved. Maybe it was security we lost, or the illusion of invincibility, or the knowledge that another person lost their son, daughter, sibling, or spouse. But we all lost that day.

Robert was the first speaker of the evening at the 9/11 Memorial Fund gala I attended on September 4th of 2012. Since I have returned home I haven't fully answered people about what the event was like to attend. I have found it difficult to relate the experience into words that were appropriate for the situations in which they were asked. It is easy to relate the fun parts, which there were many. Conversations and cocktails with celebrities, icons of industries and politicians made for easy fodder to talk around the real reason we all gathered there.

Photo: Susan Geissler | 9/11 Memorial Site

I kept being brought back to the same feeling I had on that morning 11 years ago. I had trouble eating my amazing dinner. I cried more than I wanted to but no more than the strong New Yorkers around me (and a Fort Worthian or two). We left into the night having been united, albeit in collective grief, as Americans ready to rebuild and fight for that which we hold so dear.

On Wednesday morning Amy, a wonderful member of The National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center Foundation, gave us a private tour of the grounds of the memorial and also the impending museum that will be located there. It was raining heavily as we walked out of the family center, and it seemed so fitting to watch the water wash over the names of the lost.

She and I talked about being in New York after 9/11. We both worked in the city and therefore were surrounded by the scores of the walking wounded, the broken-hearted, the fearful, and the brave. She said the thing that struck her most of those moments were "that we started talking to each other again." I saw that too in those times and it has lasted. When the Twin Towers were cracked apart that morning the fabric of American life was torn with it. But we have proven with every hand that etches over a name that we were not irrevocably torn asunder. It is that which continues to give me hope.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." 

- John Donne

[Special big wonderful thank you to Mr. Jimmy Jenkins for letting me be his guest for this event. Jimmy, you are one of a kind and a dear, dear friend.]

U.S. Olympic Skeet Surfin' Team

Dear International Olympic Committee and Esteemed Members of the Athletic Community: 

If Ping Pong and Curling are Olympic caliber events then I respectfully submit my suggestion for the next best event. That that event is Skeet Surfin'. The East Germans won't stand a chance. 

Why? Because it's totally bitchin', Ridin waves and blasting pigeons. And its neat shootin' skeet when you're ridin' on the heavies all day.

I Wish They All Could Be Double Barrel Girls

I will have no problem fielding a U.S. Dream Team and finding sponsors. Currently thinking that Becker  and Winchester are the natural providers for team apparel and equipment. 

I will be expecting your call.

Sincerely, 

Susan E. Geissler
Captain, Olympic Hopeful, Cheese Eater
U.S. Skeet Surfin' Team

There You Go, Dressing Your City Up Like a Two Dollar Whore

"...consumerist heaven, design netherworld. The new Marriott sums it up: look-at-me architecture, glitz rather than good taste, and the extinction of the regional differences that gave American cities their special sense of place. Won't somebody move this building to Dallas?" 

- Blair Kamin | Pulitzer Prize winning architecture critic 
Excerpted from: "Why Architecture Matters: Lessons From Chicago"

Last week I was returning home after an evening in Dallas and was visually assaulted by yet another hilarious example of Dallas architecture. For my non-Texan friends, I know you think I live in Dallas. I don't. I live in Fort Worth. Thirty suburban choked miles in between separate cities that could not be more different in attitude and culture.

The Omni Hotel - Dallas, TX
[Photo: Dallas South News]

I worked in uptown Dallas for five years and became accustomed to seeing a new building being erected on a weekly basis. It would then be adorned with something to make it stand out from every other new building, generally utilizing some crazy Vegas style lighting scheme.  The new Omni has taken that look to a whole new level. The entire frame is covered in multi-colored LED lights and looks like someone got drunk, ate a bunch of Skittles, and then barfed on a wall. Even better, this rainbow colored barf changes color and can display logos of various kinds. Yay! Branded Skittle barf! Genius manuver.

According to this NBC 5 article "Dallas Lights: Distraction or Attraction?"  there are certain people in Dallas who think things have gotten a bit out of hand and the lighting is just too much. I, on the other hand, think it is perfect. Dallas needs its own architectural identity. There is an oft used phrase here in Texas that you can "put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig."  Downtown Dallas was ripe for even more lipstick. It was time to add obnoxious, non-sensical usage of color, light, and flash to create attention for a downtown area where absolutely nothing interesting is going on under the hood. Nothing. Downtown Big D is about as exciting underneath the visual glamour as a Community College campus at 11pm on a Monday night.

In its defense Big D's style works for them. You can tell so much about the personal style of the residents of a city by looking at their architectural styles. Maybe it is that we psychologically gravitate toward cities that reflect our personal tastes and ideals. Maybe it is that subsequent design is created to appeal toward the target market in that area. Either way, Dallas fits many Dallasites. You know that super-hot chick with the awesome fake party pontoons, collagen plumped lips, and hair extensions dressed up in a hot pink and purple tube dress? Yes, she is here and you would not think twice seeing her out for the evening. But that same woman walking around in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco? Foolish. Or a person visiting from the Castro.

Three of the Twenty "Most Eligible Chicago Singles of 2011"
[Photo: Chicago Magazine]

I hail from Chicago, where the thought of outlining one of our tallest buildings in green neon like Dallas would make most of the population feel faint.  We also tend to look like our city and we dress up like it as well. Just a simple scan of Chicago's social scene yields a sea of people coated in cashmere, covered in razor sharp tailored black on black, with vintage diamonds and wristwatches adorning their cocktail laden hands. What Chicagoans are not is flashy and neither is our architecture. The lipstick on our pig is generally more of Bobbi Brown's Rose Brown than MAC's Viva Glam.  The architectural beauty of the city doesn't need neon. It's pleasant and engaging to walk around and be human in that space. When you are in Chicago you have a feel for not just the city itself but for the people that reside within it. I so often hear from people who travel to my hometown how beautiful they find it and how much they love the attitude and culture. Architectural design is no small part of that feeling.  People don't live in Vegas, they visit it. People live in Chicago AND visit it.

The cast of "Most Eligible Dallas"
[Photo: Bravo TV Official Site]

Dallas, on the other hand, tends to be the exact opposite of the great urban spaces of the world and a significant portion of its social scene reflects that. A scan of the Big D social scene yields bright splashes of color on barely there frocks, diamonds the size of small foreign countries, a preponderance of plastic after-market body parts, and the kind of overall look that makes you say "WOW" without even realizing you said it out loud. It's bright, flashy, often very sexy, exciting, and generally is characterized by total sensory overload.

The new Omni, in all of its flash, fits in well with the overabundance of brightly coated things in Dallas. The downside is I hardly ever hear how much people love Dallas, its attitude, or its beauty. Dallas doesn't inspire, even if the buildings are fighting so hard for attention it is like Nikki Minaj was a design consultant. But not everybody wants to be inspired. Some people just like to be entertained, and for that Dallas is winning. Well, Dallas' football team isn't winning, but that is another great example of a building unparallelled in excess and grandeur and nothing inside seems to be working as a cohesive unit.

As for people getting upset about how bright Dallas has become I recommend they do one of two things:

1. Embrace the fact that they have an identity now that doesn't just say "Welcome to Dallas" it SCREAMS it in your face and then punches you in the eyes. Then it tries to hump your leg. Why is it humping your leg? Because the Botox has seeped too far into the frontal cortex and Big D doesn't know why it feels sexy but it does. So sexy! Oops, nip slip. Let's go to VEGAS!!! What's your name again?
   
2. If it's too bright at night for any normal person coming to Dallas to handle and convention tourism dollars are declining then take a page from Fort Worth's book. During the late night the downtown buildings scale back all their lighting to minimal so the residents can sleep. Yes, downtown Fort Worth has residents. Lots of them. They live, work, shop and play without ever moving their cars. I was one. People living in an urban environment? Weird, isn't it?