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Maybe the reason I love the Pirates of the Caribbean is that there are so many fantastic visual metaphors?

One favorite moment is when Cap'n Jack's ship is sinking, and he steps off onto the dock just as the crow's nest hits the waterline and disappears. To live life with such aplomb, such style - as if everything is exactly as you meant it to be, never a moment's doubt. Or, never *showing* it, anyway. It seems to be a kind of mindset, a fearlessness.

I have to remember this is a movie, Hollywood. In real life, the ship would sink 50 yards away from the dock, or you'd get your foot tangled in a line and trip, or, or, or. And Johnny Depp has so insanely much money that he's got the first 4 or 5 levels of Maslow's Hierarchy covered for the rest of his life, barring major mishaps.

But still. Can you take that *attitude* and somehow combine it with a realistic approach? Keep your expectations low, but always walk with your head held high? Or some such?

Don't worry, I haven't been brainwashed by some 'positive thinking' guru - never happen, I don't believe in it.

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The hard part is that these stories are always about men, and any women in the story seem to be afterthoughts, asides. And the women are almost always young, and beautiful.

Remember: Most Hollywood movies are bankrolled and produced by aging, fat, balding men living out their fantasies on the silver screen. So they cast a guy like themselves as the lead (that's the only explanation I can understand for the success of someone like Jack Nicholson) and the woman of their personal dreams as the female sidekick.

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I can tell myself this stuff over and over, but it still doesn't help.

It's still insanely exhausting to be female and forty-something and broke. The idea of getting on the treadmill just so I can afford to feed and house myself so that I can be well rested to go get back on the treadmill the next day - I don't see how people do it.

I did it for as many years as I could stand it, until I basically had to run out of there as fast as possible while I could still escape under my own power and not with an escort of men in white jackets flourishing scary-looking syringes...

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I'm scaring myself. I have to stop this.

Turning to my old friend Distraction, yet again.

Later, 'gaters.