I'm just a no-name reporter. I wish I had somethin' to say.

It has been so long since I've posted anything here, it seems pretty silly to do what I am now doing. And yet, I do do.

Since my last post, quite a number of things have changed in my life. With one exception, the changes have been very nice.

The exception is a big one: the Police concert was rescheduled to June of 2008 due to Sting's useless excuse for a throat. What's the point of all that yoga shit if you can't turn up for a reunion tour? Gee whiz.

That is old news, though.

I'm writing now to go on record against Hillary Clinton.

People who have read my other nonfamily blogs will already know that I'm no fan, but I wanted to lay it out clearly before Stupor Tuesday makes my objections meaningless (either because she'll be all out or all in after tomorrow).

I was also prompted to post this anti-Hillary statement because I've read some of the hubub from pro-Hillary types (discussed and/or exemplified at Firedoglake and Pandagon, among other places).

I can narrow my anti-Hillary sentiment to three broad areas.

1. I think her husband was an awful president, and to the extent that she would govern like he did (and she reminds anyone who will listen of how glorious the good ole days were), then I dislike her. I will be so bold as to say that the differences between his 8 years and Dubyah's 7 have been largely stylistic. Dubyah's economy is largely Clinton's (give or take some tax cuts), as is the War on Terra (Clinton would have used even fewer troops, but perhaps more bombs), general foreign policy (Clinton was more of a persuader, but had the same goals and friends), and trade policy. Sure, Clinton signed Kyoto. Did he try to push it through the Senate? I could go on and on.

2. The Clintons are probably the most effective players in modern American political theater. I can't otherwise imagine how they have been able to survive the often bizarre attacks they've endured. Similarly, they have an almost uncanny ability to inspire passionate support (shocking from non-rich people: I understand the rich peoples' love). What have they ever actually accomplished, though? If neither of them had ever acted, what Good and Big thing would no longer be but now is? The Family Medical Leave Act? Something in Arkansas somewhere? So. I hate them because so many rightwingers and so many liberals seem to think that Hillary and Bill are the Real Thing.

3. Even if I liked them (I will admit to being impressed in some ways, but that's not the same thing), I would be uncomfortable with the dynastic implications of Hillary winning. It has been said elsewhere, but it can't be said enough: 8 years of Hillary, 8 years of Dubyah, 8 years of Bill, 12 years of Dubyahdaddy (yeah, I said 12.). That's not really cool, somehow. And recall that Dubyahdaddy was involved in the Ford and Nixon administrations, too.

Notice that I've not addressed any of the things Hillary says she wants to do if elected. You'll be correct in supposing that I don't expect anything markedly different from what we've had since 1980.


That leaves Obama for the Democrats. Perhaps I'll write something about him another time, but for now I'll say that he strikes me, so far, as the least objectionable major party contender since at least Bill Bradley (I don't include my beloved Kuch in this category). Furthermore, his personal style and background alone would probably shake things up nicely, even if he turns out to be another DLC type. We shall see.

As for my thoughts on McCain, I wrote almost precisely four years ago that I don't go for the hero schtick, and if you look closely I think you'll find that he's pretty consistently not on your side (I'm assuming you are not a rightwinger) when it comes down to voting.


That is all.

Except for this:

THAT'S MY SOUL UP THERE

On Friday I hope to buy tickets to see the Police in concert.

I am the man that I am because of the Police.

I learned to appreciate musicianship from them. They were the first band I really listened closely to, and they are brilliant musicians.

They taught me things like odd time signatures, and things having to do with keys and rhythms and syncopations and octaves and chords and all sorts of other stuff that I still don't fully understand. I am not a musician, but I learned all sorts of things about what is possible from listening to the Police.

I learned about Carl Jung through the Police. On the same album I was encouraged to question the concept of a just god, the inevitability of human progress, and my relationship to my mother. Synchronicity also gave me food for thought regarding obsession and murder.

The Police made me a leftie. How can you say that you're not responsible? they asked. One world is enough, they said.

Self pity in the face of loneliness: I felt it, and they gave voice.

Transcendent joy produced by love (or infatuation): is there anything better than Every Little Thing She Does is Magic?

Sinister, unhealthy love? Oh yeah. They covered that. Listen to I Burn for You.

The Police managed to sound tough without being macho. There is no misogyny in their music that I can discern (the song mentioned below involves Satan). There is respect, fear, and love of women in their music, though.

The Police had a song announcing suicide, and another preparing me for the dangers of becoming a Humbert. Masturbation: Be My Girl, Sally. Rape: A Kind of Loving.

I feel certain that the Police made me smarter, more sensitive, more aware, more thoughtful, more open, and more enthusiastic about life than I would otherwise have been. Other bands helped them, and I may still have turned out alright if they had never existed, but today, almost 25 years since their last album, I still turn to them when I'm happy and when I'm sad and when I'm angry about injustice. And when I want to hear music.

Their songs were dark and funny and clever and happy and bitter and angry and sophisticated. And they could rock. And they could be quiet. And they made me think about Everything.

I was a working class boy from Bessmer, Alabama. The Police made me a citizen of the world.

Yo.

KIND OF BLUE

The assiduous reader of this or either of my other two blogs will have noted that I have spent more or less no time discussing the role of pets in my life. The simple explanation behind this lack of ____ blogging is that I have had no pets since I began blogging. However.

I once had a cat.

Scott and Dawn and I lived together, back inna day. In 1992 the three of us went to get a kitty from the Hattiesburg "pound". The kitty we got we named Miles Davis on the way home because she was a "crazy cat" (she seemed to enjoy crawling under the pedals of Scott's Honda Prelude, as I recall).

Miles was very small when we got her. She fell asleep in my hand, once (and I have a small hand for a man of my size). She also fell asleep in a baseball cap.

Living, as we did, on the second floor of a house, we were little concerned about Miles escaping. She had free access to the roof via our windows. One day a bird got trapped in the sun room. I put Miles in the room with the bird. Nature took over. I feel guilty to this day.

Miles once brought a bird in from the roof as a gift. I eschewed it.

One night I was sitting in my room and heard Scott shout and scream from his room. It seems that Miles had taken an interest in Scott's electrical outlet. Scott lost his computer work. He learned to Save.

One night I was laying in my bed and Miles took an interest in my feet. I found the sensation oddly erotic. I have since told Birgit about it, and she harasses me for being a cat fetishist. In reality I am a foot fetishist, if anything. More likely I just dug it.

One night Scott and Dawn were out of the house. It was just Miles and I. I was in my bed. I heard Miles yelp and run up the stairs. She ran into my room and sat next to my bed, panting. I went downstairs to check, but noticed nothing amiss. Our house was rumored to be haunted.

Dawn moved out of our first house and was replaced by Bob. Bob had a cat called Puddin'. Puddin' was the most loathsome cat you can imagine (big, mangy, stinky, greyish, mean, old, etc). Puddin' harassed Miles. I once put Puddin' out by kicking it out the door. I forgot that I was wearing steel-toed shoes. I shouldn't have kicked him anyway, but my actions were in defense of Miles.

In the spring of 1993 we had a snowstorm in the South. Matt Hull and I drove from Hattiesburg to Bessemer. At one point we were stuck in the snow on the Interstate. I mooted the possibility of killing and eating Miles (who was with me). This was struck down.

I left and came back. I moved back in with Scott and Dawn. Scott and I went away one time and left Dawn in charge. We returned to find that Miles had grown picky. We asked what she had been fed. Tuna was the answer.

I like to think that I taught Miles to fight. I used to harass her. It made her tough. It gave her the strength to face Shelley's bird.

In general, however, my approach to catting is summed up here:

Data: May I ask a personal favor?
Worf: Yes?
Data: Will you take care of Spot for me?
Worf: Your animal?
Data: I am concerned that if I have another waking dream, I may injure him.
Worf: Of course. Spot, come here.
Data: Unlike a canine, Spot will not respond to verbal commands.
[Data picks up Spot and hands him to Worf, who is not quite sure how to handle the cat.]
Data: Goodbye, Spot. He will need to be fed once a day. He prefers feline supplement one-twenty-five.
Worf: I understand.
Data: And he will require water. And you must also provide him with a sand box. And you must talk to him. Tell him he is a pretty cat, and a good cat, and—
Worf: I will FEED him.
Data: Perhaps that will be enough.

It was not enough. I left Miles. She was a pretty cat, and a good cat.

I'M A LOSER, NO CHANCE TO WIN

Some of the people I teach have recently asked what I think of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I won't, yet, get into what I think about them in terms of what sort of president either might make or whether I'd vote for one of them, but I will say here what I've said to the people who have asked.

They won't win.

Neither will the Kuch or Sam Brownback.

Other than being a man who became president in the 20th century, what does Dubyah have in common with Bill Clinton, Dubyah Daddy, Ronald Raygun, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Franklin Roosevelt, and Herbert Hoover?

Ok. Lots of things. Here's what I'm going for: they were not sitting in the House or the Senate while they ran for president (FDR wasn't, was he?).

John Kennedy was a sitting senator. There may be others before Hoover (and to be honest, I'm almost uncertain enough to do some checking on him), but for some reason this is a true thing. Coincidence is possible.

Giuliani, Pataki, and Richardson will also not win (and Obama and H Clinton share something with them on this) because they are not WASPs (Hillary is, but she's not a boy wasp, FDR and TR were vaguely Dutch). Kennedy, again, is an exception.

Whatever happened to ol' Kennedy, anyway?

If the trends hold, Mike Huckabee and Jan Edwards have excellent chances. They are WASPs. Huckabee is a governor (as were Dubyah, BC, RR, and JC) and Jan is emerging from a sojourn out of government (as were Dubyahdaddy, RR, Nixon, and Eisenhower). They are also southerners. If you count the whole Sunbelt (out to Cali), only Kennedy (again) and FDR buck the trend. Ike was, as a career military man, quasi southern, and Reagan and the Bushes were transplants.

It is entirely possible (and much to be desired, I reckon) that 2008 will be The Year when a fresh breeze sweeps through the White House.

It is also possible that someone will give me all the Star Trek DVDs as a wedding present.

I WILL HIDE WHAT YOU WANT HIDDEN, AND I'LL ROAM IF YOU SAY ROAM

In addition to Pandagon, I enjoy Red State Son. Even if Pandagon's writers do not.

(They may have, but I can imagine them shifting in their seats while reading his post about them)

When, in my previous post, I suggested that I was bugged by other aspects of the story, I was thinking along the Son's lines.

IN MY MIND, I'M GOING TO CAROLINA

The blogosphere is all a-twitter over something that is simultaneously about blogging AND interesting. Mind you, the blogosphere is very small when viewed through my eyes. There are a few blogs, other than those belonging to friends, which I check out every few days and only two I check out most every day. A big reason for this is that I find most of the "big" blogs tedious and navelgazing (and don't get me started on open threads).

One of the everyday blogs is Pandagon (which I very much like) and it just so happens that events involving Pandagon have set Pandagon a-twitter.

In case you don't know, it boils down to the following. Amanda (of Pandagon) and Melissa (of Shakespeare's Sister, which seems to have no connection to the musical group or Shakespeare) were hired for internets work by the Jan-Edwards-for-Most-Popular-Girl campaign. Some of Mr Edwards's enemies (the fascist ones, not the leftist ones) noticed something that he seems not to have: Amanda and Melissa are bloggers (!), and have written things (!!), and have clear opinions (!!!), and these aren't everyone's cup of tea (!!!!), and they sometimes use durdie werds) (!!!!!).

Jan Edwards caved. Fired them.

EDITED TO ADD: Erm. Turns out those last two sentences aren't true. More edits in []s, below.

Now I would have been unlikely to vote for Jan in any event (at some point I'm going to sort through the candidates properly, but my gut tells me the Kuch is still my boyfriend), but this would [have been] be a good reason to change my mind if I had been considering it. Why? Well.

- His campaign hired two people to do public work without, apparently, having checked into them. This is stupid. [Or rather, would have been. Or is. Or something.]
- Or, the campaign did check into Amanda and Melissa and saw no problems, but immediately wimped out when challenged. This is the same sort of weak-kneed turditude that's served the party so well for the last 30 years. This is bad. [It would have been, I mean.]
- They backed down [not], by the way, when challenged BY ENEMIES. Not by friends. So, in order to keep the support of people who don't support them, they fired [not] two people who DO (did?) support them. And the [non-] fired people have a pulpit! This is stupid AND bad. [would have been]

There are loads of other things that bug me about this.

What doesn't bug me:

- Jan is free to hire or fire whomever he wishes. He's the boss.
- Anyone is free to complain about Jan's decision in this regard.

In any event, it is an interesting saga. Follow it on Pandagon. While there, check out this post and especially the comments (which are one of my least favorite things about blogs like Atrios, but most favorite about Pandagon). In this particular thread there is a fantastic rebuttal to a trollish comment.

EDIT: It remains interesting. I'm sorry Jan. I thought I saw confirmation of the firing. As my grandmother used to say, though, I thought like Lit, and smell like shit (no one knows what that means, but it rhymes). I officially reopen my heart to the outside possibility of voting for you.

EDIT: Although I am an admirer of civility, I don't think it is required in blogging. Furthermore, I don't think religious people get insulted nearly often enough. They're so cute when they're indignant. I will soon write about Richard Dawkins's recent extended attempt to bring out their cuteness.

ALEMANIA, YOU GOT ONE WHEEL IN THE DITCH, AND A WHEEL ON THE TRACK?

I'm from Alabama. I live in Germany. And I'm just sayin' . . .

sausages, beer, no speed limits on some highways, 4-wheelers are street legal, Texas Lightning was the German entry for the most recent Eurovision, Fußball, Michael Schumacher, the Scorpions, David Hasselhof, losing two world wars (and starting at least one of them), genocide,
smoking is allowed (not banned by law in any way) everywhere, Benny the Rat.

I could see a Tallulah Bankhead and raise a Marlene Dietrich, offer a Berthold Brecht in response to a Tennessee Williams, and put William Faulkner between Günter Grass and Thomas Mann.

Granted, I could write a much longer list of things that carry precisely the opposite implication, but still.

Du bist womöglich einen Rotnacken.

THE WAITING IS THE HARDEST PART

Recently Carlton posted about abortion rights and, in the comments section, I wondered why it has been deemed necessary that there should be a "waiting period". I wasn't being entirely ingenuous, since I had a ghost of an opinion about why these exist. Shortly after making my comment I saw, on Pandagon (which is generally excellent), something that gave a bit more form to my ghost of an opinion. It all boils down to the general effort to make abortions as difficult to obtain as possible while still keeping them legal.

After I read the Pandagon piece I thought a bit more about it and then sent an email to Carlton. I said that Pandagon summed up my suspicion, "otherwise the waiting periods make nothing more than symbolic sense. I mean, honestly, how many people were popping in for abortions-while-u-wait in the years before these laws came into effect? Even if [one is] ambivalent/hostile about children (like me) and pleased as punch to have the right to an abortion, the fact that one is pregnant would, I suspect, incline most women to, perhaps, consider what to do before taking action. This [getting an abortion] is hardly the equivalent to 'well hey! There's an assortment of chewing gum! And right here next to the checkout! Well, I didn't WANT gum, but now that I've got a shot at some I think I'll just help myself!'''

I might have continued by pointing out that while the other famous American waiting period - for guns - is designed in part to encourage an over thinking of It, the more important function is to give the dealer time to check public records for the legality of the purchase. Even without the second function, however, thinking over whether to by a gun is very different from thinking over whether to get an abortion. Although it is clearly possible that some women might find out they are pregnant and immediately storm down to the nearest clinic for a snap abortion, I find it difficult to believe that this sort of thing happens very often. In the (perhaps equally unlikely) event of a heat-of-the-moment gun purchase, however, there is a clear threat to public safety at stake.

And before you splutter that abortion is murder, I'm going to tell you that a fetus is not capable of being a victim of murder, since it is not a person. A fetus is a potential person, in much the same way that lump of coal is a potential diamond.

Carlton prompted me to blog about this (I forget, sometimes, that I have a blog) and so now I have.

I will continue with a related point. I am not happy with the "sincere" handwringing pose pro-choice politicians so often strike (the safe, legal, and rare mantra, which is often delivered with a slight quaver in the voice). Perhaps these folks really are sincere, but I still don't like it. There is entirely too much emotion swirling around this issue (most issues, in fact) and I think it is bad strategy, and just plain bad, to add to it. Abortions are medical procedures. Politicians who say things like the decision is "between a woman and her god" make me sick. Freighting abortions with so much public guilt and hooha does nothing more than increase the pressure on the people who are thinking about having one. If you think someone should be able to have the choice but should "think it over", then shut the fuck up, shove your piety up your ass, and let her think.

If you don't think they should have the choice, of course, you are well within your rights to be an ass about it, but you'll never get invited over to my house.