Well, I’m still not reading blogs and hardly any news, going on over a month now. That either makes me a potentially enlightened sumbitch or a better Wal-Mart shopper.
I did skim a news service article a while back about candidates going to Yearly Kos and how some bloggers were all excited about being a bigger influence on politics. Can that really be true? — and how would that make any difference if it is? Not burning questions, by any means. But the it’s still Wars-R-Us, right? So I am curious why people are still trying to elect more Democrats. Is it something in their food? I’m perfectly serious. It’s like, if you stand there with your mouth open long enough, a Holy Fly will come inside!
Me, all I hear is pants falling to the floor. The other day I was rambling on to my wife about how we could keep perishables cold if there were no electricity any more. Much more to the point, I’d think, but she was not amused.
Comment by K.J. Webb
1 August 22, 2007, 3:42 pm o'clock |
I like “all I hear is pants falling to the floor”. A riff on “getting caught with their pants down”, I suppose, but if I deconstruct it a bit, seems to me you’re suggesting that these feckless Dems are doing more than simply getting found out in compromising positions. Rather, they’re actively compromising themselves, they’re “dropping their pants”. They’re shameless, in a word.
Maybe I parse your gnomic wisdom a bridge too far, dear Farr, but I liked the wittiness of your phrasing anyhow, no matter what it means. As I get older I give ever higher praise to gleaming phrases, struck off in a rusting world.
Comment by John
2 August 22, 2007, 3:51 pm o'clock |
Close, but no kewpie doll! The reference is to feckless voters & bloggers who perform services for politicians by working within the system. Waiting for salvation from outside agency and all.
You’re just not thinking malevolently enough. We got puppies in the microwave down here on teevee every night, man. At least you got the rusting right.
Comment by barb
3 August 22, 2007, 6:31 pm o'clock |
Actually, working within the system is meant to mitigate the damage in certain circumstances for certain people or animals or plants at times when it works while the big paradigm prepares to change over, if it does. You know that!
Seriously, YearlyKos was a gas. Like Woodstock without the drugs and youth. And I got to stay on over 10 days and revisit my old home town of Chicago. I saw all the places I lived as a child. Most of them were still rather intact. I rode on a tourist schooner. I ate Italian beefs. I went to Buddy Guy’s club and heard old blues players. I even bought a couple new tshirts. Big ones.
Comment by John
4 August 22, 2007, 7:01 pm o'clock |
Yes, Barb, I know. I’m sure it was a gas, and I know you got some important networking accomplished. Too bad I couldn’t be nicer, since I’m only speaking for myself and anything that smacks of passing judgement is just plain silly. I also want to be clear that the negativity expressed came directly from scanning headlines.
But honestly, I just can’t go there any more. I don’t think we can imagine or prepare. Even “big paradigm” is just another thought.
Onward, then.
Comment by K.J. Webb
5 August 22, 2007, 7:15 pm o'clock |
To John: Damn, I keep forgetting about those bloggers. Reckon I need to do more field work on ‘em to really work up an aversion.
To Barb: You make me sad for my misspent youth when you talk about Chicago - first big city I ever lived in, place I first kissed a girl, place I first got beat up (Blackstone Rangers on south side), place I first gained then lost idealism about the improvability of our species, place I … well, you get the idea. I still love the place - maybe on account of all those firsts, which will never come again, being as gone as youth is gone.
Comment by John
6 August 22, 2007, 8:33 pm o'clock |
My wife is a similar Chicago lover (graduate work at Newberry Library, later academic life). There must be something to it.
My first visit to the city was in ‘62. I was with a Jewish guy named Joel who drove us under the “el” through a neighborhood where he made me hunch down low and ran every stop sign. The second time I was there was in the winter of ‘63, on an overnight of a ride-share trip from Dallas to NYC with an idiot who’d put six-packs on the hood, up against the windshield (loose!), to chill them down while we were driving down the road at night. I slept at the Moody Bible Institute and took an early morning walk down a nearby street where a trio of derelicts warming themselves around a trashcan fire invited me into an alley to “get lucky.” I didn’t go!
But ah, you don’t need to develop an aversion to bloggers. If you’re into “the news,” they’re the only ones who do it right these days. I just had to get my head out of the washing machine, and it is a dead end from my perspective. The bleeding of psychic energy concerned me the most, however. That’s a very personal thing, but since I’ve spoken up about it people have responded.
Comment by barb
7 August 24, 2007, 3:21 pm o'clock |
I don’t take any judgment from any comments here. After all, we are all where we are at. There are various coping mechanisms. Whatever works at the time is the right one. Who knows where I will be in a month’s or a year’s time, but right now it feels good to connect, witness and do something active that might help one person or more. Or just myself.
KJ: Part of my time in Chicago was a sentimental journey, seeing the sidewalks I roller skated on, the trees I climbed, the ball fields I played on. It put me right back into who I was before life, kind and cruel, etched my consciousness. As most people say when they try to go “home,” it all looked so much smaller…