excuse me while i kiss this guy

i`ve got purple haze stuck in my head this morning and it contains one of the most misheard lyric in all of creation, so i though i`d add a bit of whimsy to the post.

last Thursday i went to the graduation of a friend from the Nashville Peace and Justice Center Leadership programme. i have to say, i must be developing social skills in my old age, because i went, i interacted and i participated and that`s a big deal for me.

my mother concluded about the time i was about thirteen i was anti-social and told me so and i really had no retort. i pretty much grew up around adults in a time where the belief was that children were to be seen and not heard, so i learned to keep myself occupied; mostly with a book. it`s not that i lack social graces; my mother instilled those in me early on; it`s just that once the preliminaries are done, i`ll find a quiet corner of the room and stay there.

if i have a book or access to a book i`m pretty much lost for the evening, however if i don`t have any reading material, i observe people. i took two years of sociology because observing people en masse fascinates me. i don`t like to make generalisations, but i think i have a disdain for people because the conversations tend to be insipid and my own bias against stupid people. stupidity, in my humble estimation, has nothing to an education or lack thereof, but an inability to form opinions of one`s own or accept the validity or entitlement of other opinions.

the point of the leadership programme is to help you get involved and help organise grassroots campaigns in your community. and the good wife and i have signed up for the next session. part of my rationale was that i can interact with these people. i may not agree with everything all the people in the programme stand for but i can learn something and it will also help me get more involved in something that i have a vested interest in; immigrant rights.

i had a detailed conversation with one of the recent graduates about immigration rights; which was her forte; and she was tell me that the USCIS sanctioned doctor i went to for my medical has a habit of having female immigrants get nude for examination without a female assistant or family member in the room. as far as i know that`s illegal. what makes this worse is that i had the same medical recently and i didn`t have to undress.