Polemic Pontification

You can’t have my life force. You will not and cannot take my chi. You can’t fill your neediness with my energy; I’m wise to your Jedi mind tricks, and your attempts to rob me of my essence will fail, breaking upon the rock that is my soul; your emotional kung fu is weak, and cannot pierce the veil created by my mental lei of garlic.

In all seriousness, I feel bad for you; I know you don’t do it on purpose. Rather, it’s a matter of instinct. You prowl the night, foraging like a tiger in the brush. The endless pit of despair that is your need drives you to reach out. I smell it on you, loneliness tinged with self doubt; in some cases even extreme loathing manifesting in self torment. You produce multiple bogeys on my NEEDAR.

I empathize with your loneliness; believe me. Alienation is my middle name. Misfits and Misanthropes ‘R’ Us. I can’t help but try and be nice, making small talk even as I raise my shields and make note of the exits. But I can’t help you. You look outward; I look inward. No one is an island, it’s true; but I’m fairly content with only occasional visitors of my own choosing, relishing solitude as it suits. I’m just here to observe and enjoy the eye candy, like the candy that serves me drinks. Remove the arrow of your suffering yourself; we didn’t cover that in my first responder training. Of course, if I were a real Buddhist, I would feel that it is my duty to teach you how to do that, but I’m not, and it is not my job. My job is to look to my own arrows, thank you very much. You’re on your own with yours. Good luck; I wish you well.

The Mother Post of All Mixed Metaphors and Allusions — brought to you by Glenfiddich! If you can’t feel your esophagus after you swallow, it’s not single malt! — will now draw to a close. Sorry to my friends — the ones I choose to let onto my exclusive beach — who were concerned with my need for a hasty exit.

Thank you and good night.

Yes, I’m still alive. Real life (or death, as the case may be; more on that later) — damn you — has kept me too busy for cyber life. Well, except for a certain paladin named Picofarad. But that’s neither here nor there.

But today I got a fortune in a fortune cookie that could not pass with out comment:

Your dreams will bring you into a profitable venture.

Um, guess what, O Great Fortune Cookie Gods? I have news for you: my dreams are a one way ticket to dissolution and destitution, as I’ve already demonstrated for much of my adult life. Not to mention get me arrested in most Southern states.

Someone had to have thought of that already. C’est la vie, onto our regulalry scheduled rant:

In the span of 48 hours, just two days, Barack Obama managed to break not one but two campaign promises. He’s not even captured the office he’s running for, and already pledges made on the campaign trail are getting jettisoned.

Just once – one time – I’d like a politician to prove my cynicism ill-founded. Just once. Nothing would make me happier than to be proven wrong when it comes to my so-called negative outlook and politics.

Now, for the record, I’m not voting for McCain; I think I won’t be voting for anyone in the next presidential election. I’m a registered independent; the Republican and Democratic parties are merely flipsides of the same coin, from my perspective. I don’t really have any problem with Obama, at least not more so than I do with any other career politician. The zealotry and blind, mindless devotion of his devotees that swallow his rhetoric without question does bother me, but that’s beside the point. I don’t think I’m going to vote because I’m damn sick and tired of having to vote for the lesser of two evils. I’m drawing a philosophical line in the sand, for what it is worth, which is about two cents shy of diddley squat.

Needless to say I’ve maintained a healthy skepticism of Obama from the start; I’ve not been impressed with his voting record in the Senate, not that I am with any of our Congressional leaders, really. But I’ve always felt that his voting record belies the quote-unquote audacity of hope he seems to engender in others. I figured that, like all career politicians, he was doing and saying what he needs to get elected, these past few years.

I do think it’s absolutely wonderful that in my lifetime an African American – with a name like his, no less – captured the nomination of one of the two major political parties and has a shot at the presidency of these United States. I even hope he wins – but I can’t, in good faith, vote for him. I’m under no illusions when it comes to Obama, although I’m sure many would argue that I suffer under the Audacity of Mope.

Heh, I think I may have to rename my blog that: the Audacity of Mope. Maybe print up t-shirts of Morrissey or Robert Smith. But I digress, as usual.

I am rather surprised, however, that Obama is already shedding the campaign promises so quickly. Given my cynicism, I suppose I should have seen it coming, but geez, already, dude? I guess even I held out a little hope the new potential boss-elect wouldn’t be the same as the old boss, in spite of what I knew in my heart of hearts to be true.

To wit: on Thursday of last week, Obama announced that he wouldn’t accept public financing of his presidential campaign, opting instead to rely on his already extensive coffers provided by private contributors. For those that don’t follow this sort of thing, opting for public campaign financing means that a candidate can only use money set aside in the federal treasury once he or she (almost) gets a party’s official nomination. Up until that time, private funds are fair game. Obama’s decision comes even though he pledged (several times, as I recall) during his Democratic primary campaign that he would accept public funding and the accompanying limits if McCain would. For his part, McCain has managed not to flip flop on this, so far, and says he will.

It’s not surprising in retrospect; Obama has blown the doors off campaign fund raising records. One could argue that as a minority candidate, he needs all the help he can get. I’m not arguing that – but then he should have had the foresight to say this ahead of time; at the very least he should have come forward sooner. If you’re going to talk the talk, you should walk the walk. He should have had, dare I say it, the audacity to hope that Americans would understand. And given Obama supporters’ near-religious fanatical devotion, I doubt it would have mattered one way or the other.

So that’s one big fat campaign promise shot to hell. Then, only a day later, Obama said he supported the House version of the domestic spy bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For me, the biggest problem here is that he, or anyone that says they are American, for that matter, supports FISA at all, in its current form or that in the House bill. The old FISA enabled the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct a wiretap for up to 72 hours while waiting for court approval as delineated by the legislation. Under this new, so-called compromise bill, the NSA could conduct a wiretap for up to a week on a suspected U.S. citizen and can continue to do so during related court appeals. What’s more, this new FISA allows the government to use any information it collects as evidence in a court of law, even if a FISA-related court finally rules that its surveillance is unlawful.

Dude, where’s my country? I guess the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are just a D.C. tourist attractions these post 9/11 days, and nothing more.

At some point, if we’re really the good guys, we have to start acting like the good guys, again, if we ever did. Good guys don’t do this sort of stuff. Good guys don’t spy on their own citizens and terrorists be damned, along with domestic fear mongers. The ends do not justify the means. This is America and its damn well time we started acting like it again – for The Children©™ if nothing else. Otherwise, The Terrorists Have Already Won©™ You know, I was always taught as a child in school, that we had … oh, let me see … certain inalienable rights, as U.S. citizens, and that these were inviolate, and that protecting them was of utmost importance, even a matter of life and death. I even believed it; I guess I still do, and that’s why I get upset about this sort of stuff. But while I’m wishing for a politician that’s not full of B.S., maybe I’ll wish for everything I learned in civics and social studies classes not to be empty rhetoric, too.

But I digress yet again; let’s get back to Obama-rama. Obama said during his primary campaign, with regard to FISA, that he wouldn’t vote for a bill that contained retroactive immunity for the telecommunications companies that aided and abetted the NSA in its spying, should said spying prove illegal in certain (if not all) instances. This seems to me to be a minor point of FISA, although it’s an aspect that seems to get all the media attention and ensuing discussion (maybe because telcos are big money/lobbyists on Capitol Hill?). It’s like worrying about whether or not the guy who heated up the hot poker that your torturer is about to sodomize me with will get punished – I’d rather not get sodomized with a hot poker at all, and if anyone should be responsible, it’s the person doing the thrusting.

Sorry for the graphic analogy, but I’m a wee bit passionate about this, despite my cynicism. I thought I was supposed to calm down when I got to middle age?

So, when the House passed this quote-unquote compromise on FISA (how is it a comprise when the Democrats rolled over, again, for the umpteenth time), replete with telco immunity, Obama had this to say:

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people.

He does say prior to this that he will try and “work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses,” so I’ll give him credit for that. Technically, I suppose he hasn’t broken his campaign promise yet, but then he’s technically not the Democratic candidate, yet, either. And he basically says he’ll support it, telco immunity or not. I think my favorite history blog, “Edge of the American West” – which also seems to cover a lot of current politics as well (at least one of the several bloggers there are fervent Obama supporters, even), put it best:

Here’s the link for their original post; it contains a link to Obama’s full statement from Friday, June 20, on FISA. Of course, being a cynic, I can’t help but wonder if there are any telcos on Obama’s contributor list. Actually, I’d be surprised if there were not, but then I am imbued with the Audacity of Mope.

That reminds me, I have to plug another blog I read regularly (I guess I need to update my blogroll): PostBourgie: the Audacity of Dope. Relax, conservative types; it’s not that kind of dope.

Technorati Tags: Obama, McCain, campaign, cynicism, campaign financing

Was it the nearly full moon? Or the fact that it was the summer solstice that made Friday evening such a weird evening? A combination of factors, perhaps? In any event, last night was in a word, weird. Albeit in an amusing way. I love to observe this human species in its natural habitat.

It occurred to me today while getting caught up on the blog of one of my favorite authors, Caitlín R. Kiernan, that in a previous life I must surely have been an anthropologist. Or perhaps I will be in a next one. Or, if we’re just some random cosmic accident and nothing of us persists after entropy catches up with our bodies, then perhaps I should have studied anthropology in my youth. No regrets, mind you, but anthropology certainly would have been an interesting path — not that journalism hasn’t been.

But in the course of the blog entry I was reading this afternoon, Ms. Kiernan mentions that the father of her significant other “has finally returned from his latest anthropological sojourn to some exotic clime or another (I forget just where, somewhere in South America).” That struck a cord, since I love to travel, particularly to exotic climes, and I love to observe people and ponder what makes them tick and act the way they do, since, even in middle age I seem to have no capacity to understand my “fellow” humans. In fact, last night, I was enjoying watching the weirdness around me so much that I found myself wishing I could be invisible, so I could observe unnoticed.

This in turn struck me as rather ironic, given the fact that I spent much of my youth making sure that I would be noticed, that I would stand apart from the crowd. There was my gym rat phase, marked by tight cut-offs, tank-tops and shaved skin. Then there was my goth phase, which was rather a minor one, albeit marked by even more odd shaving; I couldn’t pull off androgyny very well (and have pictures to prove it), and I had already moved on by the time the rivet heads came along. But I would have made a great rivet head. Then there was the post-goth piercing phase, an almost-rivet head phase, which persisted some years, even into my dotage and my playing outside phase (which has also involved more shaving, thanks to cycling).

In retrospect I suspect — heh — that even though the worry of a face plant on my mountain bike or some other such klutzy maneuver in the great outdoors provided the impetus to remove all my facial piercings a few years back, actually it was a matter of timing. I won’t say maturity, exactly, but a matter of age and growth. I had come to realize that I no longer needed to broadcast or demonstrate visibly that I stood out from the crowd. After years of proclaiming this to be so I finally, genuinely didn’t care what other people thought, for the most part. I didn’t care whether they thought I was one of them or not; it didn’t matter; I had finally arrived at that destination after declaring all along the way — sometimes rather loudly — for years that I was already there.

In fact, I seem to have come to a point that I’m, er, pointed in the opposite direction; indeed, I don’t want to stand out, as it often draws unwanted attention — I’ve always been a psycho magnet (some might say it takes one to know one), and when I was decked out in black and sporting metal in my lips and elsewhere, my sphere of psychotic attraction was magnified considerably. For every cool person I met looking like that, I met a lot that were not: the damaged, the needy, the drunk looking for a fight with that which he didn’t understand, etc.

And now that I blend more easily into the background, this happens much less so, and that’s a good thing. It sill happens, just not nearly as much. And it is so much easier to sit back and observe people relatively undetected, pondering their mystery and being amused by their antics (honestly, I’m not as full of myself and pompous as this might make it sound — full of enough of myself to keep a blog, though). Although sitting in a bar by yourself is bound to attract unwanted attention, sooner or later. Of course, it’s also still an effective means of attracting people looking to get laid in a relatively short period of time. Unless one is looking to get laid by a relatively stable person; then it’s not so much.

Oh, and before I forget, to all you Wiccans out there: Happy Litha! Or is it Merry Litha? Not sure what the vernacular is, but the sentiment is the same regardless.

Technorati Tags: full moon, summer solstice, Caitlín R. Kiernan, anthropology, Litha

Has it really been two weeks? I’m a slacker.

So I was at this conference in Baltimore, Md., for most of the previous week, where there was a lot of talk about business and the environment, and how business is already changing, having acknowledged what most of our current political leaders here in the United States like to pretend doesn’t exist: the reality of climate change. And yet I couldn’t help but notice that I didn’t see anyone else that was attending the conference riding the light-rail train between downtown and the airport. There were some 2,000 attendees; I arrived the afternoon before the conference started, and left on Friday late morning the last day of the conference. Seems to me I should have at least seen a few others taking the train, if I wasn’t the only one. And it’s not like the light-rail in Baltimore is easy to miss; you see signs for it all over the airport, and there is a stop literally right in front of the convention center where this conference was held. There’s a train running every 10 or 15 minutes or so.

Hypocrisy is an ugly thing. If you’re gonna talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk.

And you know, I realized this week that I hate the term “climate change.” To me, this is like saying someone “passed away.” No they didn’t. They died. They’re dead; they’re not coming back, and all that this so terribly implies. That’s the simple truth of the matter. Saying “passed away” glosses over the unpleasant nature of it, giving it a socially-acceptable patina. Ever since my mother’s death, I wince whenever I hear someone say someone else “passed,” or “passed away.” Perhaps it makes it easier for some to deal with, but for me, it’s belittling the dead and the meaning that their death has for those that loved them.

In much the same way, the term climate change puts a similarly neutral patina on global warming. Makes it less worrisome and scary. I can see the argument that some might make, that climate change is perhaps a more accurate term, in that it covers a variety of phenomena related to the fact that the earth is getting warmer, not just rising temperatures. But I have to reject it; the term climate change makes this too innocuous. If I travel from the 45th parallel to the equator, it gets warmer — that’s climate change. It snows in winter where I live, and now at the end of spring, it’s sunny and warm — that’s climate change. The fact that our modern lifestyle is producing measurable damage to our atmosphere, and consequently our environment, that’s global warming. That’s not innocuous; it’s bad.

My mother didn’t pass away. She died, it nearly drove me insane with grief, and I still miss her. Climate change doesn’t make me want to ride my bike and take the train. Global warming does because it scares me, almost as much as hypocrisy.

On the plus side, I finally got to visit Edgar Allan Poe’s grave. I’ve been to Baltimore three or four times now for various conferences/tradeshows at the convention center, which is just a few blocks from this Revolutionary-War era church/graveyard. Each time I had every intention of going, but somehow never managed it. This time I was determined to follow through. But dumb-ass me didn’t even bring any brandy. D’oh! I had every intention of grabbing one of those little bottles of hooch from my hotel-room ‘fridge (it didn’t have brandy, but I figured whiskey would do, and it’s not like Edgar is in a position to argue), but alas, I forgot. Guess I’ll have to remedy that the next time I pass through Baltimore.

Technorati Tags: environment, business, climate change, train, light-rail, Hypocrisy, global warming, Edgar Allan Poe, brandy