I Challenge You

Thank you for reading after that. Here is my challenge:

Tell me how this speech fails. Not in overblown, general statements. Not in partisan blandishments. Tell me specifically, in concrete detail, how Senator Barack Obama is wrong.

Because unless I'm missing something, he's the smartest human who's run for the presidency in my lifetime, and one whom I'd like to see putting his hand on whatever book and becoming my boss.

February: The Tough Month

It's been a while since I posted anything other than videos or quick blurbs about nothing. It isn't that I haven't had the time--hell, I've been working hard to find ways to put off working--but I haven't had the mental capacity to even consider what to write, let alone bother trying to compose my thoughts on a subject.

The truth is, February was a tough month. And the difficulty with February started way back in October. When we got to Norman I felt lucky to get work right away, but I still had to hold out for two and a half months before I'd get paid. We made it, even if it was stressful. Just part of living the glamorous adjunct life, I guess. But then around the middle of October I realized, "Rut-roh. That not-getting-paid thing is going to happen again at the end of January." Sure, this time I'd only go one month without pay, but could there be a worse time? Right after Christmas? Right after a planned drive to Minnesota (and all the costs that entails, even if others are entirely too generous with us). No pay going into February? The month with Valentine's Day? The month with Michele's birthday? Her first birthday ever spent out of reach of her family? A birthday that might be made easier for her if I can do something to make a big deal about it? An actual milestone birthday on top of that?

Needless to say, I've been a basket case for months (I heard that "your whole life" from the back . . .), and I considered staying behind in Oklahoma over winter break so I could find a job and just keep working--keep the difficulty to a minimum. For a number of reasons I decided that wasn't going to work out, so I made the trip and gritted my teeth for the coming depression.

And that's the funny thing about stress. Even though I knew I could make the situation more bearable by picking up a weekend job I didn't. I tried a few times, made some halfhearted stabs at some extra work, but in the end just sighed and resigned myself to a month of self-loathing.

And then one of my sections was cancelled (not enough enrolled), so I had a smaller paycheck to look forward to on the other end of February. That was nice.

Add into that strain a class that insists on challenging every announcement I make. Add to that a few job openings I needed to get myself together to apply to. Add to that my complete inability to write on any of my projects. And on top of that goes a further inability to even read productively. I was a mess. A mess of my own making.

But now it's March, and I've submitted my applications, and I see the end of this stack of grading easing over the horizon, and I got paid on Friday. So the tightness in my chest has loosened a little. I'm less likely to make a (misplaced) snarky comment to anyone (poor Michele--this was not a good month). Maybe now I can write, can spend some time thinking without my thoughts meandering off in negativity like a drunken butterfly headed for the pretty forest fire.

Maybe now I can blog. There's plenty to talk about. Even if my decision on Election Day will be a no-brainer (Obama's my first choice, but if Hillary wins the Dem nomination I have her ranked next --here's my list 1. Obama, 2. Clinton, 3. A loaf of bread, 4. Ralph Nader, . . . 389. The BTK killer, 390. Paris Hilton, 391. Carrot Top, 392. John McCain (or any other conservative)).

And it gets better: in two weeks my mom and Skiffy* and the Cat Whisperer** are driving down for a ten-day visit over Spring Break. The weather is beautiful (75 and sunny yesterday), and the trees are budding. I feel almost human. Almost.

* I need to find a better name for him. "Skiffy" was momentarily funny, but it isn't anymore and it doesn't exactly encapsulate who he is. I'm working on it.
** "The Cat Whisperer," however, stays. Because it's perfect.

Trying Not to Be Cynical

I would like to think the majority of the American public is intelligent and capable of processing basic information. I'd like to think the humans who live near me have some sort of competence. And then I'm faced with this:


------ Race Results Display ------------ VOTES ----- % PRECINCTS

(DEM) FOR PRESIDENT ---------------------------------- 18 OF 2220
HILLARY CLINTON ------------------------------------------ 2,899 --- 45.49%
BILL RICHARDSON ---------------------------------------------- 97 ----- 1.52%
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD -----------------------------------------35 ----- .55%
BARACK OBAMA ------------------------------------------- 2,434 ----- 38.19%
DENNIS J. KUCINICH ------------------------------------------------ 36 ---- .56%
JOHN EDWARDS ---------------------------------------------- 804 ------ 12.62%
JIM ROGERS --------------------------------------------------- 68 ----- 1.07%

I'm not even going to get into the Republicans, because they're all idiots. But look at this. Richardson, Kucinich, Edwards, and Dodd have all dropped out.

And people are still voting for them.

Fucking idiots.

A Poorly-Written Fantasy

Don't get your undies in a bunch, Buckaroo and Jam. I'm not making a statement about Zelazny's Amber novels. I'm not even done with Nine Princes in Amber yet. But the book did provoke some ideas, and those led to the phrase "poorly-written fantasy."

I'm a little more than halfway through Nine Princes, and I've been pleased. The story is characteristic of 1960s fantasy in that Zelazny isn't following a series of expected developments, but is telling a story that surprises--and when it doesn't surprise, it at least wasn't predicted. Too much of what happened in the 1980s led to formulaic stories. The quest starts with an unlikely hero who meets with some companions he has trouble getting along with, and they slowly bond as they struggle along a Quest. The good guys are easily identified, as are the bad guys. The quest inevitably involves finding some ancient artifact or recovering a long-forgotten tradition with which the hero ultimately defeats the villain. The hero is able to succeed because goodness is his essence. There's more of a postmodern, realistic grit to Zelazny (so far).

The formula novels are boring. I like Zelazny's style (even if the story is eerily reminiscent of Heinlein's Glory Road at first) because life isn't predictable and easy like that. We have to think to figure out who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. We can't just look to what's been done in the past, because as times change new solutions are needed to solve emerging problems. Tolkien set the stage, and if you can trust Terry Pratchett (and I do), all of fantasy literature is merely rearranging the furniture in Tolkein's attic. It's the guys like Zelazny, Glen Cook, Steven Brust, Fritz Lieber, and Michael Moorcock who surprise, who deviate and invent. Even Robert Jordan, who was very good at what he did, only modified Tolkien's formula. I need something new--I've seen the old. So Zelazny is a good break.

But as I'm reading Nine Princes, I'm also following the political process, the run-up to the November Presidential election. I know already that I'll vote for either the Democratic candidate or an independent who I agree with almost completely. I won't vote for a Republican because the American conservative political position is morally and intellectually bankrupt. The Republicans drive me crazy with their us-vs.-them oversimplicity, their blind reliance on tradition, and their insufferable self-righteousness.

And then it occurs to me: American political conservatism is a poorly-written fantasy. Conservatives are the "good guys," everyone else is the "bad guys," and these lines are easily identified. They cling to tradition, regardless of changing circumstances, and they have nothing new to offer.

But what they didn't imagine is that in 2008, Sauron would be represented by George W. Bush.

The Religious Reich

Here's a scary quote I read in Liz Clarke's profile of Mike Huckabee in the Washington Post this morning:

"I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer," [Huckabee] told a group of pastors on the eve of the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention. "I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives." He concluded that speech with words he says he'd phrase differently today: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

I don't know which scares me more: that an American in 1998, with even a passing acquaintance with the First Amendment, could think that this is an appropriate agenda for an aspiring President, or that millions of people would vote for him based on this single criterion. And I realize he says he'd phrase it differently now, but I don't see how different phrasing would change the idea.

No! No! I'm One of You!

So Mitt Romney gave a speech yesterday defending his Mormonism and explaining how it wouldn't play a part in his decision-making. Of course it's bullshit, and of course he displayed what a moron he is (as opposed to what a Mormon he is). For a more thorough dissection of the speech than I'll give, read Nathan's post, which addresses the most egregious lapses.

In his attempt to counter Mike Huckabee's increase in popularity in Iowa, Romney has decided to throw everything into appealing to evangelical Christians so he can save his campaign. In doing so he's positioned himself against secularists, who seem to be supported by the text of the Constitution of the United States. But he knows this plays well to the pious, so he can ride this horse 'til it collapses, because nobody's there to call him on it.

A quote from Romney's speech comes close to addressing reality:

[R]eligious tolerance would be a shallow principle, indeed, if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree.

In the interest of completeness, I'd restate it as:

Tolerance of other worldviews would be a shallow principle, indeed, if it were reserved only for religious faiths.

This Is Why I'm Not a Poet

I love to play with language and ideas, but normally the language and the ideas take over for me, and I can't back away to make an artistic piece out of it. This also gets in the way of my fiction, but I have ways of dealing with it there.

So here's a poem that occurred to me while I worked yesterday. Keep in mind that I haven't followed the actual ode form--there's neither strophe, antistrophe, nor epode. I haven't chosen the Pindaric, Homerian, or Irregular form. These are just thoughts so far, with some wordplay involved. And it's probably too polemic to be a poem in any case, but I thought that loathing would be a fun, ironic twist to an ode. So here it is:

Ode to George W. Bush

The dimmest of bulbs, the dullest of knives,
I must admire his brass balls
            (or is it brainless conviction?)
as he and the knaves on his staff
send wave after wave of braver men
and women to needless, deadly tasks. Only the dumbest
dullards would praise the knob who wastes
the lives of noble soldiers to prove he’s a man. A lost cause,
but he can’t think his way
from here to there, from A to B,
from C to shining C-.
In the best of all ends
we hope to see that he’s
            at least as well
hung as Saddam was.

Yeah, and it's probably a bit too juvenile, too. But it makes me laugh. Plus, I just had to write it down, because it was distracting me. Now I can move on to my satiric short story about the invasion of Iowa.

In a Snit

I’m getting angry again. I spent some time this morning reading the Washington Post, and for whatever reason I was more interested in the political articles. I read about John Edwards, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich. I read about Dubya’s tour through South America and Hugo Chávez’s response. It irritated me that I agreed more with Chávez than I did our own president.

Sometimes I feel like I should run for office. I get angry about the way the country is led, and I get angry about the lack of real alternatives on the ballot. The Republicrats and the Demublicans are two adjacent shades of the same color and they both have a vested interest in keeping the nation’s attention on the false dilemmas of their issues. The whole concept needs to be revised, not tinkered with.

The attitude of America as the Global Parent, whether the conservative “do as I say” version or the liberal “let Mommy kiss it and make it better” paradigm, is crap. It’s time our leaders recognize this country is just one of two hundred (or so) and we have no more business invading Iraq than, say, Sri Lanka has sending troops to secure Kansas (even if it seems sometimes they need to be saved from themselves). We have no more business dictating to Argentina how to operate than France has telling us what to do. We need to get all our shit in one sock before we even consider diddling with other countries.

And all this talk about the economy and our way of life needs to end. “The economy” isn’t an entity with value of itself. It’s an abstraction that represents the very issue running this country into the ditch. Our economy is a sham and our prosperity is hollow as long as the whole structure is based on luxury spending and speculation. Our currency isn’t even based on a real standard. And our “way of life?” Greed, selfishness, and self-righteousness regroupthought as “ambition,” “self-reliance,” and “moral clarity.” Crap.

Okay, I purged. Thanks for indulging me. Here's a random happy picture:

Stupid White Men by Michael Moore

I generally avoid books like this, even when I'll likely agree with the politics, because I don't want to contribute to the shrill, closed-minded barking that passes for political discourse anymore. But I tried this book for two reasons: one is that I'm capable of analyzing the material and teasing out what's substance and what's noise, and the second is that it was on the bargain table for two dollars. I figured, if nothing else, I'd be a bit better informed about how these arguments are made.

Moore takes a lot of flak for his anti-conservative stance, and most of his detractors fall in the Republican camp, so I was a bit surprised to find he's so critical of the Democrats, too. In fact, he sees the two parties as co-conspirators in the political shell game that distracts voters from seeing a clear picture. In short, his political position is almost identical to mine.

This book has some good and some bad. The good is that it raises questions that ought to be examined. The bad is that he uses these issues mostly as launching points for rants and jokes. These are amusing, but don't do much in the way of political discourse. Moore leaves it to the reader to further explore these ideas, and my guess is that those who criticize him most vehemently either see these rants as an effort to close the debate, or they fear the readers will consider this the final word. Either would be a mistake, and I think the critics show a lack of respect for the American reading citizen.

Of course, with the state of the nation as it is, maybe that disrespect is appropriate.

Go ahead and read this if you want some new ways to assess the State of the Union, but don't check your brain at the door. These are just ideas, not answers.