very early Sunday (like ten minutes after midnight), October 17, 2004

The technicolor dreams of black & white people

Starting off with a Matchbox 20 quote would earn a sneer from my baby brother (he’s a Counting Crows fanatic; the Crows have, consistently, better lyrics than Matchbox 20, I grant you, but not so much better as to make them all THAT; it’s not like either of them are the Barenaked Ladies or anything), but I like what I like.

The weather has cooled off quite a bit over the past couple of days. I slept with the AC off for the first time since, I don’t know, last March, probably, last night, and may be able to tonight, as well.

When you’re talking about the weather on your blog, you know you’re tapped for topics.

I could talk about work… always something weird happening there… but there’s a possibility at least one of my co-workers may check this page out from time to time, so speaking freely of workplace madness is dangerous, and it doesn’t seem worth it if I can’t be honest. So we’ll leave that alone for the time being.

I’m just coming off one of those two week periods when so much of my last paycheck went immediately into vast, sucking bill singularities that I’d pretty much been flat broke for about fourteen days straight. That being the case, I was haunting the local ATM Thursday night/Friday morning, and when my direct deposit hit at 2 a.m., I headed up to Wal-mart and spent way too much money on crap I don’t need. Mostly DVDs; I picked up Mask, The Untouchables, Aladdin, Farhenheit 9/11 and the first season of an HBO cop drama I’d heard good things about called The Wire. I also picked up a few groceries, so the trip wasn’t a total loss.

I’m enjoying The Wire so far… it’s rather reminiscent of Homicide: Life On The Street, mostly because it’s also set in Baltimore. And unless there are physical flaws in the other DVDs, I expect to enjoy them, as well… of them all, only Farhenheit 9/11 is unknown to me, the rest are all movies I enjoy and am happy to own on DVD now. Still… WAY too much money, especially when I also ordered about $200 worth of old comics from my pusher up north. Some Dr. Strange, some Green Lantern, a little Marvel Two In One and Marvel Presents, a run of Omega The Unknown and Foolkiller… it adds up. For somebody who doesn’t smoke, drink, or do drugs, I have surprisingly expensive vices…

I’m vaguely encouraged by some things I’m seeing recently with regard to the Presidential races. All the polls show Bush and Kerry running neck and neck (even AOL’s, which has the largest participation of any of them), but what I find interesting is that the numbers on people who say that the debates changed who they were going to vote for substantially favor Kerry. My first hand sample of this is also encouraging; a couple of rabid Bushies from work have mused to me that since the debates, they are now undecided… Dubya apparently did not come across well to his core constituency.

Offsetting this is my cynical but unfortunately probably quite accurate observation that this election will almost certainly be decided by the as yet undecided voters, and if you are still undecided in this Presidential election, you have to be a moron, in my humble opinion. This means the election will be decided by morons, and, well, out of the two major candidates, which one are the morons more likely to vote for? It’s a chilling thought.

I honestly feel that in a sane reality, John Kerry would be the Republican candidate for office, and we’d have someone… well, someone liberal… as the Democratic candidate. Of course, in a reasonable society, ‘liberal’ wouldn’t be considered a hateful insult and a genuinely toxic label every serious politician scrambles to avoid having hung on them, too. And for what little it may be worth, Kerry strikes me as being far more liberal in many ways than Bill Clinton ever was. I just wish we lived in a world where admitting to being liberal wasn’t a political death sentence…

Of course, I also wish we lived in a world where simply coming out and saying (as the more intelligent, tolerant, and compassionate candidates in this election would clearly like to) that the idea of banning any legal process to any American citizen on any basis is not only stupid and immoral, it’s also un-Constitutional. No one would dream of arguing before the Supreme Court that interracial couples should not be allowed to be married, or running for office on such a plank, and, for that matter, no one would dream of going before a judge and trying to argue that a defendant isn’t entitled to a trial by jury simply because they are gay. Saying that this particular couple can avail themselves of a legal procedure that provides them with very distinctly defined social and economic advantages, while this other couple cannot, is idiotic, wrong, and it directly violates the first clause of the 14th Amendment. It astonishes me that conservative religious whack jobs can’t see that… but, then, conservative religious whack jobs only quote the Constitution out of context anyway, when they’re trying to argue that ‘religious freedom’ means only the freedom to be religious the American Way, which generally translates as, devout Sunday School attending Bible thumping Christian Protestant.

In case all of the above is phrased too circuitously (is that a word?) for anyone out there to grasp, let me state this bluntly: marriage is part of the law. Our Constitution mandates that all people must be treated equally under the law. To be specific, Amendment XIV states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Get that? The State you live in, regardless of how pinheaded your Legislature and/or the majority of its constituents may be, is prohibited from passing or enforcing any law that abridges (that means removes or limits or in any way inhibits) the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, and it also states explicitly that no matter how sloped browed, slack jawed, or moth breathing your State Legislature may be, they are still not allowed to deny anyone within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. American citizens get married all the time; the legal status of marriage affords them certain specifically defined protections, and it is certainly a privilege of American citizens to get married if they feel like it. Your State is NOT ALLOWED to fuck with this, regardless of whether the people getting married are gay, pantheistic, two-headed, green-blooded, or inclined to worship Satan every other Tuesday.

Or, to be even more blunt, we do not need to make gay marriage legal, the Constitution says it IS legal, and furthermore, the Constitution makes it illegal to attempt to pass any laws to the opposite effect.

And, honestly, I don’t know why I’m off on this hobbyhorse, since I don’t really even know any gay people all that well, but I simply resent living in a world so contrained by superstition, narrow minded bigotry, and general unreason that candidates for high office, who clearly would like to come out and say “It isn’t anyone’s BUSINESS who gets married and who doesn’t, ESPECIALLY if they can’t have kids, for chrissake”, can’t.

Of course, it also deeply upsets me that I live in a society in which every candidate for any office, no matter where they live, has to profess regular churchgoing to have a chance of winning their election. In which a sitting President can state publicly that atheists should not be considered true Americans because we are ‘one nation under God’, and not be impeached, or even criticized for it by the press.

But a lot of things freak me out, actually. Like the notion that, after four years of steadily increasing repressive anti-intellectualism and crushingly oppressive social pressure to conform to some insane and disturbingly thought-free ideal of patriotism and decency, a man who has absolutely no qualifications to lead a Boy Scout Troop has a disgustingly healthy chance of winning re-election.

My, what a depressing blog entry this had turned out to be.

In terms of depressing shit, Florida is shaping up to be an even worse electoral nightmare this time around than in 2000. With Dubya’s little brother still in charge, we simply have no hope of any kind of unbiased oversight of the election, and of course, this election is going to be microscopically close here. Jeb’s hand picked successor to The Evil That Is Katherine Harris is Glenda Hood, which is, essentially, like giving the Wicked Witch of the West the Wicked Witch of the East’s old job. Most recent newspaper accounts indicate both parties are registering ‘poll watchers’ in record numbers. The Democratic Party is mandating their poll watchers to make sure every eligible voter counts; the Repubs, more ominously, are instructing their own operatives to ‘do everything possible to see to it that election laws are enforced’. Anyone who t thinks that this will translate into every legally allowable form of obstructionism in predominantly Democratic voting districts is very perceptive.

And, no, I am not showing a liberal bias here, although, well, I AM a liberal, so if I were, it would be understandable. Seeing to it that every eligible voter gets to vote is not disruptive, nor does it favor one party or the other… although I’ll admit, I doubt Democratic organizers will be running registration drives, or bussing voters in from, Republican strong holds. Nonetheless, getting out the vote isn’t going to slow anything down; the electoral process is geared for it, after all.

What is going to fuck things up terribly is Republican monkey-wrenchers hanging around polling places in Democratic districts demanding to see picture ID’s from every black voter that walks in, going through the registration forms to make sure every t is crossed and every i is dotted, and then peering dimwittedly but truculently over Glenda Hood’s horribly flawed list of convicted felons and demanding that anyone whose name is similar to any name on that list provide documentary proof that they are entitled to vote.

You can bet this won’t be happening in any red districts, by the way. And if too many white people who aren’t ostentatiously wearing Kerry/Edwards buttons get carded, I’ll be stunned as well.

The recount… and yes, Virginia, there is going to be a recount, probably in more than one state this time; the polls are running that close… will be hell on earth, too, mostly because of the predominance of electronic voting machines this time around. Yes, most of them can be programmed to spit out a print out, but I can already hear lawyers on both sides warming up their “but honestly your Honor how can we REALLY KNOW how accurate those printouts ARE” opening statements.

I honestly think that while all politicians are, by definition, power hungry, the Republicans are simply besotted with the need to dominate. They are like crackheads for authority. If it looks like they are going to lose, they will hang this great nation of ours up on a clothesline and beat it like a rug for days, weeks, or months, hoping to create enough of a dust cloud to let them squeak back into office. And if it looks like they are winning, they are going to go to any extreme necessary to protect that victory. Ain’t nobody gallantly conceding this time around… not even with their fingers crossed, like last time.

This one is going to be ugly. Ugly enough to make the 2000 election look pleasant and civilized by comparison, I think.

Okay, this really IS depressing. I’m going to go watch The Wire.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, "Wow, I didn't recognize you in men's clothing". According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I'm reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I'd take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here's The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people's blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin's Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron's blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don't really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren't related to me by marriage, I'd most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I've learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don't care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I'd get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don't Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.