Well...this day just crawls along at a snail's pace. Luckily, everybody is leaving early so we'll all have time to get ready and do nothing on Memorial day weekend. Actually, I'll be going white water rafting up in Kern county, then continue up to Oakland and fly out to see my brother's high school graduation. Not exactly a fitting tribute to all the men and women who have died and are currently fighting for this country's freedoms, but it'll have to do, I suppose. Not that anybody here in California celebrates the military in any way. We're so left-wing that the fire department in Berkeley was forbidden from flying an American flag from their engines just in case it provoked someone into violence. Provoked someone? The American flag? I guess this is proof that the communists in red just turned into the environmentalists in green and moved to Northern California. My friend JJ is out in Kentucky serving in the military right now and he always tells me that the love the Army in that state. I'm not surprised, as Kentucky is part of actual America or as the elites in California and New York refer to as "fly over country." These people, along with white male businessmen are the only groups you're allowed to make fun of in this country anymore. Heaven forbid you comment on someone's race, sex, height, weight, sexual orientation in any way that doesn't make them look like perfect, infalliable humans. That is the amusing part of these leftist's worldview; we don't make fun of anybody unless they disagree with us...then they're obviously evil and must be stopped by any means necessary. I'm sure that worked with the politburo, but luckily for us Americans, we made our government so inefficient that it can't get anything done.

I'm not looking forward to traveling out to Michigan to visit my mother, brother and sister. Not because I don't like them, but because Michigan just plain sucks. It's hot, muggy and full of mosquitoes. There's nothing to do except go to the movies or go bowling...if I lived there, I'm sure I'd have a different opinion, but as it stands, I have to deal with the crappy weather and indifferent siblings as well as my mom's...well, dysfunctional family. My grandfather is an alcoholic, but with good reason as his 40 year old son still lives in his basement and his 35 year old daughter lives with her deadbeat husband in one of his bedrooms upstairs complete with a cooler filled with beer to deaden the senses to their miserable lives. That isn't even the half of it really. My bum of an aunt who lives upstairs somehow managed to get evicted from her trailer home. How embarrassing is that? They don't even qualify as trailer trash anymore. Anyways, I'll have to visit these poor saps as well as my grandmother who is quite insane. I know I have to love them as I don't get to pick my family...but it doesn't mean I have to like or respect them. It's hard to do either once you get to know them. The one uncle I have that I do like on my mom's side of the family is an ex-alcoholic as well. The only thing he had going for him was the fact that he actually showed up to work. He's an ass and a serious racist, which made the fact that his youngest daughter ended up getting knocked up by a black man all the more ironic. Perhaps not ironic...more fitting, I suppose. Either way, he's calmed down a lot since then.

This is what I have to look forward to...dealing with people I don't like in a place I can't stand all to attend a graduation by a brother who never talks to me. At least I don't have to do this every year.