Now that I have gotten in to the habit of blogging on here, I feel kind of guilty when I don’t.  I might as well have been raised Catholic. The truth is, I haven’t written anything in a while because I bought a green screen.  It started when I saw Avatar and I thought “Hell, I can do that.”. No no. Just kidding. It started when I saw two 8 year old boys on You Tube making green screens with chartreuse construction paper.  I said to myself, I said I said, “I can’t be stupider than an eight year old.” Even though I didn’t really want to test myself and learn the horrible truth.

But since that day I actually purchased a green screen and a stand for it. Now there is no place to sit in my office. I have gotten so pre-occupied playing green screen games that I haven’t been thinking of things to blog about. It did occur to me, somewhere along the way, that I might want to write about  how irritating it was to hear them play the Helen Reddy song “I am Woman” at the Academy Awards when Kathryn Bigelow walked up to receive the prize for Best Director . Geez. Could they be a little dorkier? That song was lame and never  even genuinely relevant when it was new. But perhaps I am not understanding something. Maybe  the basis for picking the “walking to the podium song” is to reduce the winner to an embarrassing sociological stereotype. If that is the case, then I would like to insist that in the future, when that other gender starts to dominate the director prize again and Martin Scorcese or Steven Speilberg wins the award, the Academy play “I’m a Man” by the Spencer Davis Group . But its too late to be talking about this now. My infatuation with my new green screen made me lose my window of opportunity . Damn.

And its too teeth grindingly frustrating to even begin to whine about the way the health care bill keeps getting derailed. More so for the fact that I am in that category of people who is in line for a 39% increase in health insurance premiums. I don’t really understand a country that wants to protect and defend insurance companies like these.

Then I thought about my other pet peeve of the moment: the non-negotiable pressure to join a million things. My father used to give a lot of advice. His worst piece of advice was  “Don’t let the dogs sleep in the same room with you. They’ll use up all the oxygen.” His best piece of advice was “For Chrissakes, Merrill, just stay out of the stock market.” But his most frequent piece of advice was “Why don’t you  join more clubs.” Back when I was in high school and a member of almost nothing, I would throw his words right back at him. “Why don’t you?.” I would say because he was a member of nothing. We didn’t even have a religious affiliation.But now, despite my genetically inherited inclination toward being an unaffiliated loner,   I find myself an involuntary member of many many things.  Why, just in my neighborhood alone I am a card carrying member of  three different supermarkets, a beauty supply store, an office supply store, a pharmacy and a gym. Fingers crossed they haven’t noticed I don’t attend meetings.  (Although that might be a good weight loss technique: having a look at who else  is on the membership roster for the Ralph’s Club.)

I also had no choice but to become a member of three unions, (even though I only wanted to join one) and seven internet sites, ( even though I wanted to join none. Spammers were opening fake accounts in my name and I needed to reclaim my online birthright. ) I guess my father would be bursting with pride. But  of all the wonderful wonderful  clubs whose cards I now carry in my wallet, there is only one club card that has any real meaning to me.   It is the one club on whose board  I would proudly serve . I have a feeling I might be the only member in my demographic sample. Perhaps by a good 4 or 5 decades. But I believe I could use that to my advantage. I bet  I would  dominate at those meetings! I would rule that club. There’s no debate I couldn’t win . I would be their queen.  Well, back to my green screen.

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