Now Maybe?

Can we please talk about this now?  Like, an adult discussion?

What bothers me most about this recent spate is that these disturbed individuals (who are nonetheless given access to an instrument that is nothing short of a key to the life and death of their neighbors) are taking their vengeance on strangers and innocents.

Your boss fires you so you kill him, that I get--as wrong as it is, obviously.  Your boss fires you so you shoot up a grocery store or whatever?  Sorry, you've completely lost me.

And going so far as to set a trap for people who not only have done you no harm but are actively trying to help you?  As a final statement to a world you've given up on...you're doing it so wrong it makes me wish your awful, confused, too short life had been shorter and even worse.

Picking Through The (Delicious) Ashes

This article detailing the failings of the Romney campaign leading up to the 2012 election is, to me, like french fries wrapped in strips of bacon that were cooked in grease heated by Hendrix licks.

Yet, in the midst of all the Romney staffers' squinting guiltily in the bright glare of 20/20 hindsight--"we should have highlighted his character! we should have spent more on our ground game! oh, oh!"--one thing that people seem to have forgotten is...Romney was a terrible nominee for the current Republican Party.

Let's revisit the two biggies.  First, Romney's a Mormon, a religion which, up until they knew they were stuck with him, most Republicans considered about as Christian as the Branch Davidians.  In a party that is, if not built on, at least leaning drunkenly for support on, the Christianist factions at work in the modern U.S., this is a problem.

Second, not only was he the governor of a blue state (not a firing offense in and of itself) but his signature achievement, the health care law, had to be forgotten--Orwell-style--lest it remind the base that Romney paved the way for the Affordable Care Act, the legislative achievement of Obama's that made Republican's froth at the mouth because it was...an achievement...of Obama's.  Having your own nominee exude faint whiffs of the very thing that sends your peeps into an irrational, inchoate rage is not--pardon the expression--starting in the black.

So, you strip away Romney's faith and his signature achievement in public service, and all you're left with is a rich white guy.  And while this alone is apparently enough to make you the standard-bearer of the modern Republican Party, it is no longer enough, thankfully, to make you the leader of the free world.

I Feel Fine

Today was the apocalypse...again.  This time, the doomsday warnings came dressed as jaguars, rather than sporting yarmulkes, because the end of the world is nothing if not multicultural.

Yet, while the earth still turns, heedless of the now two times it was supposed to keel over and call it quits (third time's the charm?), and the tug of time draws us ever forward despite the deep grooves our kicking heels have left in the floor behind us, my inner philosopher and hobby aphorist is compelled to reflect sagely that every day is the end of the world as we know it.

Deep, man.

"Guns Chasten Speech"

This NYT opinion is the most clearly stated rebuttal of the rhetoric flying around that we are free because of our guns.  This never made much sense to me; it didn't strike me as wrong, per se, just superfluous to the debate.  Well, it turns out I just needed a guiding hand from Mr. DeBrabander: we are free in spite of our guns.

The idea that a populace armed with civilian (or even sub-military grade) weaponry could stave off the most powerful military in all of history has always seemed...farfetched to me.  And not just to me.  Someone else was feeling demotivated:

But back to free speech and the limits placed on it by public carry permits.  It reminds me of a lunch I once had with an old friend.  He's of Italian stock, and had friends who had gone into organized crime.  He himself is a writer, but he still carried around some of that "old neighborhood" swagger.  For whatever reason, we found ourselves discussing RICO prosecutors, and how they must view the mafia as a bunch of thugs.  After conceding that they are indeed thugs, a cloud of pride crossed my friend's face.  "Yeah," he said dismissively, "but those lawyers wouldn't say that if a guido was standing right behind them."  No, they probably wouldn't--anymore than anyone else would--because they know that chances are they'd end up as the red sauce on top of some kid's spaghetti-all-covered-with-cheese.  

And that is the exact effect that guns have on our discourse too.  The fact that said guido is indeed a thug does not change based on his proximity to a prosecutor's turned back.  What changes is the prosecutor's willingness to openly state the truth when confronted with violent consequences.  He has been silenced by an implied threat.  The same way he likely would be if someone he had a dispute with were carrying a gun.

The NRA likes to say that an armed society is a polite society.  But that's just a polite way of saying a self-censored society.  These are not the same thing.

Yes, This Would Clearly Work...

There are suggestions now flying around that we prevent future school shootings by arming the teachers.  These suggestions, naturally, are coming from the same people who can't trust teachers not to turn their neckless little darlings into raging atheist polygamist pinko tax lovers.

My attempt to tease apart the tangle of cognitive dissonance on display here never made it past incoherent blubbering, but this person managed to say what needs to be said:

So I’m a teacher. According to conservative orthodoxy, I’m a parasite on the public’s dime who is only interested in indoctrinating the precious children of America into communism or atheism or whatever. I can’t be trusted to have any control over the curriculum I teach. I can’t be trusted to fairly and impartially evaluate my students, let alone my colleagues. I can’t be trusted to have collective bargaining rights. I can’t be trusted to have an objective view of governmental policy when it comes to my own profession.

But they’ll trust me to keep a gun in a room filled with children.

Even the cynicism-producing neurons of my prefrontal cortex can’t wrap themselves around this kind of stupid bullshit.

Will We Ever Talk About This?

There's been a shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut.  An elementary school.

Of course, if only we as a society weren't so anti-gun (snort) and had allowed those children to pack heat then none of this would have happened, amirite?

Also, too, fuck you, Jay Carney.  Now is exactly when we should talk about these things.

UPDATE:  It turns out that the perennial blossom of potted douche standing proudly on the front porch of right blogistan, Instapundit, accidentally beat me to my punchline by almost an hour.  You think you can make this up, but the gun nuts prove you can't.

Also, too, there seems to be some fellow feeling about telling Jay Carney to fuck off.

A Night Of Bond-ing

I saw Skyfall tonight.  It was a decent installment--not quite as intelligent as Daniel Craig's last two Bond movies, but enjoyable nonetheless.  A few spoilers, er, thoughts:

--I continue to enjoy the opening montages wherein the main plot points of the film are set out, if one knows how to decode them.  For instance, there are the images of stone arches which forecast the fight in the sewer, the Chinese dragons which intimate Bond's fateful trip to Macau, and the storm of slowly descending, flaming sperm which clearly presage his tryst with a former Macanese sex slave.

--I appreciate that the villain's motivation had nothing to do with conquering the world.  I maintain that that was the most satisfying part of Casino Royale (where Le Chifre's prime concern is market manipulation and avoiding the edge of an African warlord's machete) and the least satisfying part of the otherwise compelling Quantum of Solace.  The world is too big, too abstract, which makes seeking to possess it not menacing but campy.  That's why it's so often used in conjunction with comic book baddies; comic books trade in melodrama.  This is not a suitable row to hoe for any franchise looking to call itself "gritty."

--That said, may we please place a moratorium post-haste on the villain being a former agent/teammate/co-worker/squash partner of the good guy(s)?  It's not just that someone else has already done this angle better, it's that another Bond movie has already done this angle better.  See: Pierce Brosnan, Goldeneye.  I mean, c'mon people, it's not like you're lifting something from the George Lazenby era; Goldeneye was out barely thirteen years ago.

--And speaking of moratoriums, let's throw a heavy rug over the trope that the villain, while supposedly languishing in the hero's clutches, actually "meant to get caught! omg!!!1!!"  Let's especially consign to the Dustbin of Anemic Writerly Devices using one of the good guys to blurt this aloud while turning in place amid the bodies of nameless guards and the general bedlam surrounding the villain's escape.  This gimmick was the weakest point of the otherwise masterful Dark Knight Returns, and if Heath Ledger's Joker couldn't make it a believable-sounding plan then you can't either.

--Thanks to the final scene, we finally have an answer to Bond's dysfunctional relationships with women: while giving Vesper Lynd clear pride of place in his overflowing gynecic menagerie, 007's ain true love has apparently only ever been M.  At least, she's the only woman he has ever shed an actual tear for.  (His reconciliation to the idea that Vesper's affection was indeed real, and not another spy game, is the terse statement "Congratulations, you were right...about Vesper" uttered almost monotone to M at the end of Quantum.  No waterworks there.)  Dunno about you, but I'd also suffer from a myriad of psychosexual maladjustments if Dame Judi Dench was my paragon of the feminine.

--Sadly, it seems my favorite fan theory, that "James Bond" is actually a code name given to successive agents over the course of the last 50 years, is false.  The grave markers at Bond's auld Scottish home clearly give his family name as "Bond," and I highly doubt the parental units buried beneath were a full 1/5th of their era's double-0 branch.  This revelation was both surprising and sad, especially since Javier Bardem's character makes a point of forcing the issue, with his insistence that M call him by his real name, not his MI6 moniker.  Having "Bond" as a code name answered so much and so nicely, as far as continuity goes; it's a shame to see it discarded.  Besides, isn't it dangerous for an assassin to be handing out his real name?  I know mom and pop are pushing up thistles, but surely there are other loved ones and acquaintances that would be put in danger by the practice?

--Lastly, I mentioned above that this go-round is "not quite as intelligent" as the last two Craig installments.  Casino and Quantum were both defined by Bond's coldblooded devotion to his given mission; he either bent the people around him to the ends of this mission or he discharged them (and often a bullet at the same time).  Skyfall doesn't have this same kind of rigor.  For example, in the previous two movies, Bond's choice of lovers was strategic, i.e., the seductions moved him closer to his goal.  (Vesper Lynd was interesting in that she fell outside the pattern, which made their relationship seem to be genuinely emotional.)  The sexual conquests in Skyfall (three in the first 45 minutes, no less!) are, rather, perfunctory: here's a beautiful woman in the same room as James frickin' Bond, what d'you think is gonna happen (bwoh-chicka-bwoh-bwoh)?  Me, I prefer my Bond to be a calculating killer who just happens to be on the side of the angels over a James Bond who's basically a kind of AXE Body Spray in a special edition MI6 bottle.

That said, it was a nice ride, especially on an iMax screen.  Go see!

An American (Taliban)'s Heritage

A story from a few days out is that entirely-sane-why-are-you-asking Sen. Jim DeMint (R--Seriously-quit-asking) is leaving the Senate to be a high muckety-muck at the Heritage Foundation.  There seems to be much hullabaloo on the right about whether this new non-governmental mucketiness is good or bad for the conservative movement.  I have no idea about that, since I think anything short of an anti-psychotic administered forcefully to the buttocks of the Republican party strikes me as bad for the conservative movement.

However,  this bit in The New Yorker jumped out at me (via Balloon Juice):

Last year, he indicated that his belief in small government is rooted in the theory that there is a fixed and limited amount of space that can be occupied by the government and the deity combined.  The size of the public sector and the size of the Almighty are inversely proportional to each other.  It's an iron law, a zero-sum game: "I've said it often and I believe it--the bigger government gets, the smaller God gets."

This is the succinct summation of what motivates the American theocratic movement (or the "American Taliban", as the DailyKos so pithily sneers): unless God is the driving force of government, government is the enemy of God.

I understand the current speculation that DeMint is off to Heritage to level up to the role of Republican kingmaker, and maybe that will prove to be more dangerous in the long run to our secular government, but for the short term, not having such a fundamentally un-American voice on the floor of our Senate can be nothing but a relief.

And on a side note, He's not much of an Almighty if he can be shrunk as easily as a cotton shirt by the mundane proceedings of a representative democracy, is He?  If I were a religious nut, I'd devote a smidge of hullabaloo to that little theological pickle first.

Outgunned

A nut in Arizona has decided to discriminate against Obama voters by refusing to sell them guns.

Right-o.  Um, explain to me again why the right wing is so terrified of liberals "coming for their guns" when apparently all you have to do is turn us away with an ad in the local paper?

Twinkie-Dee, Twinkie-Dum

The B.C.T.W.&G.M.I. Union at the Hostess plants have found a novel way of fighting the obesity epidemic.

I think whichever unions are responsible for Cool Ranch Doritos and those unfairly delicious Bowl Noodle Soups should really think about renegotiating their contracts next...

Gaza Doom

(The title is a riff on the dwarven kingdom of Khazad-dum from LOTR...and is probably in very poor taste, which is why I went with it.)

Re: the burgeoning conflict between Israel and Gaza, I have no more sympathy for the parties involved in a war rooted in religion than I would for those engaged in a race war.  Find something less silly to fight about.

Father Dearest

With Mitt Romney's defeat, may we finally place a moratorium on candidates for high office running because of their daddy issues?  (I'm looking at you, John Quincy!)  But c'mon, Romney, George W., even "Dreams From My Father" Obam-er.  It's overdone.  Let it drop.

Deep Thought

One of my personal rules on blogging has always been not to comment on things that irritate me at work, not least because I'm blogging under my own name and the parties in question could find said comments. To be fair, these last few years I've worked with a great batch of people (at two different jobs), but there are always small and occasionally large things that raise one's hackles.

I think this rule is why my blogging has always ever been so light.  If only because my daily job, like everyone's, encompasses so much of my daily experience.  Not commenting on it puts a huge chunk of my thoughts and feelings out of play.

~~~~~~~~~~~

On a related note, people who say disparaging things about co-workers on Facebook not only violate my one rule in an even baser fashion, they also violate their mother with their clear lack of upbringing.

Poor mom.

An Experiment In Capitalism

Having let this blog sit idle for the better part of a year, I decided upon my return to try something Completely Different: I have signed up to do sponsored posts/reviews/poems/interpretive dance pieces for a little joint called PayPerPost.

As excited as I am to whore out my little corner of the blogosphere to the highest bidder, I do not have high hopes for turning any real profit.  Still, having a post or two potentially provide a little beer money is more potential beer money than any of my posts were generating otherwise.

Any sponsored posts will be noted in the post itself.  Don't expect to see such a note very often, I would say.  Then again, it will probably be more often than anyone's seen anything on this site in the past nine months or so.

So there's that.

The New U.S. Poet Laure-sorry, what?

Modern poetry is

a well-written paragraph chopped

up into random collections

of sentence fragments

that resist easy

reading.

Profundity.

Doric

New York State passed the gay marriage bill last night.

I feel the kind of embarrassment that any self-aware white person must have felt during the civil rights movement of the 60's: I'm so happy for my gay friends but I know, as a straight person, that I was never the one who was being oppressed. I hope my treasured gays forgive me the small entitlement of my satisfaction.

Still, it makes me miss Doric Wilson. Deeply. I was folded into his inner circle (as part of the ridiculously talented TOSOSII) for a very brief two years or so, until my own personal problems drove me away from many of my then-current social circles. He was one of the original gay rights activists--he never knew that speaking out for people of his sexual predilection was a "thing"--and ended up being part of the Stonewall riots that started this whole ball rolling forty years ago.

Doric died very recently. And I didn't say anything about it at the time because I felt that same entitlement-based embarrassment. But I desperately wish he had been around to see this, to see NYC actually legalize--i.e., normalize--the kind of society that he'd been fighting for since the 50's, before he knew he was fighting for anything other than people not harming other people.

I admit that others--Barry, Mark, Kathleen, Jamie--have way more claim on missing him than I do, but those brief moments of having the sunshine of his attention focused on me have really never faded.

He saw so much during his time on earth; I just wish he'd been around to see this.

Happy Birthday To Me

A list of my birthday presents, as given to me today and over this past year:

--I got to play Arlene's Grocery with The Conditionals last night. Arlene's has been on a par for me, as a measure of success, with venues like the Bitter End, ever since I saw a band there--Bailiff--whom I thought were terminally cool and desperately wanted to join. I was not cool at the time though, and things worked out the way they were meant to.

--I'm finally playing with an honest-to-god blues band, headed by a Mr. Nick E.T. (he'd hate me for saying he was the bandleader, which is delicious): the Brooklyn Blues Project. And we're good. Since I started at age 12, I never thought I'd be one of the "good" musicians playing in a "good" band.

--I got new headphones so I can finally use my ipod again.

--I got new underwear so I can finally use my pants again. Wait....

And, drumroll pleeze...

--My wife. That's all, just "my wife." Everything about her. From her head to her toes, to everything between her ears, to her lovely, lightly beating heart. The love of my life.

Now, spin me like an LP! Call me your pin-up Jesus! (Buh-dum!) I'm 33, y'all!

Rapturous

It's May 22nd. The rapture was yesterday. Anybody notice a certain 144,000 people missing this morning? Bueller...?

Israel still around? Oh, it is? And growing, you say?

His ways truly are mysterious.....

Early Morning Random Snark

Um...

Today, my husband got a random vasectomy, all because I said we needed protection. I meant condoms. Apparently he hadn't been listening when I told him about my fantasies of having a big family some day. FML.

I would argue that he heard you crystal clear....

A personal version:

Today, I got into theater because I'm a late afternoon/night person, but today--a Sunday--I'm stuck at work from 9am till after midnight, essentially from one morning into the next. FML.

Yep, sounds about right...

Paging Dr. Freud

Actually, this seems like an accurate snapshot of both parties (the hilarious idea of "Republican intervention" aside)....

Suck It Up: Addendum

John Cole concurs:

I am voting for [Obama] in 2012 no matter what, because even though he has many flaws, he will be head and shoulders above whatever swamp thing crawls out of the primordial ooze of lies, homophobia, racial resentment, fearmongering, religious triumphalism, and class warfare that will be the GOP primaries.

Yeah. That's totally what I meant to say too.

Roving Insults

I love this.

I love it because each is correct in his assessment of the other: Rove was Bush ("He Who Shall Not Be Named by the GOP Candidates," to use Sully's delightful moniker), and is a partial owner or greater in all the failures of those eight years. And Trump is a joke candidate, after sprinting so breathlessly into the birther camp in recent days.

To be fair, despite their current differences they both have one thing in common: either now or in the past they've both been completely bankrupt.

Ba-ziiinngg.....

Suck It Up

This seems very right to me. I've been reading variations of this sentiment all over the place lately--"Obama failed to deliver on this, that, or the other, therefore he has not earned my support for his reelection"--and I am immediately put in mind of our world, post-2003.

The Iraq War, a war of choice driven by many cherished neuroses of GWB and the American right, is a war that Al Gore would have never started. Period. And the fact that it was started is the utmost proof that keeping the psychopaths and the willfully stupid out of high office is a righteous goal in itself.

Any sane, left-leaning individual whose disillusionment with Obama may be pushing them to such selfish handwringing should take a look at the Republican field and imagine--just imagine--what any one of those sycophants and extremists would do with the office of President.

And then he or she should get off their fainting couch and pull the lever for another four years of often less-than-inspiring, clearly imperfect sanity...

RadioHack

My going theory is that Radioshack is a charity shelter for people too stupid to work at Home Depot. Now, they say you should test a theory with the intent to disprove it. And every time I brave a Radioshack, I take my fragile faith in humanity, hold it in my hopeful little hands, and do just that.

~~~~~

A day or so ago, I walk into my neighborhood Radioshack just before closing time, needing contact cleaner for a piece of electronics I have. There's an employee by the door, vacuuming. I ask him if they carry contact cleaner. He smiles kindly, the way you would for a child or someone with polio braces.

"Contact cleaner," I say.

"You know you're in Radioshack, right?" he asks. I nod, "Yeah, do you guys have contact cleaner?" He then points to his eye: "Contacts?"

Ah--I realize--one of the mentally homeless.

"No, no," I say "contact cleaner...for cleaning electrical connections." The kind you'd find in an electronics store, I refrain from saying. "Ooohhh," he nods, for whatever reason visibly relieved. Then he shouts over to employee #2, who's stocking shelves with his back to us, "Hey, we have contact cleaner, right?"

Employee #2 doesn't look up, just shakes his head 'no.' Employee #1 persists, "I think we do. You know, contact cleaner!" Prodded by this exclamation mark, employee #2 finally lifts his head and sizes me up, clearly annoyed at having to answer such a stupid question...and points to his eye. "Contacts?" he says, with a puckered smirk.

Hm--I think--both of these guys' shoes are tied, no velcro, and they appear to be breathing fine, no eye dilation....

"No," I repeat, "contact cleaner...for cleaning electrical connections."

Employee #2 looks at me a second, processing.

Finally, a third employee, who'd kept his head down through this entire exchange, counting receipts at the register, says simply, "it's in aisle three." And sure enough...

~~~~~~~

A few observations, in a l'esprit de l'escalier type way.

First, what was the sin of employee #3--the only one of the bunch seemingly capable of breathing through his nose--that he should be consigned to such a Sartre-esque hell?

Second, it's extremely disconcerting to be viewed as an idiot by idiots. The experience has a panic-inducing, through-the-looking-glass quality to it.

Third, my theory stands. Radioshack: 1; The Shining Future of Humanity: 0.

Musician, Heal Thyself!

After scratching my finger while on vacation, the cut got infected. Naturally, this finger is the pointer on my left hand, i.e., the one I use to do bar chords on the guitar.

Not a painful situation at all. Ahem.

I found myself in this per-dick-a-mint--again naturally--after I had scheduled myself for nine hours of basically continuous band practice the week I got back in town.

So there I am, walking into the studio with my aching, swollen finger, thinking over the torments of the hours to come. I start playing--ouch. I play some more. I get into it a bit; get the adrenaline going a little. And a few hours later...no more pain.

Examining my finger, I notice that the swelling is gone. A few days later, it seems like my day of playing cured me entirely, enough that I could confidently cancel the doc's appointment I had scheduled for this morning.

Chalk it up to the power of music. Oh, and pressing a bubble of infected flesh against sharp, steel strings for hours on end.

But mostly music....