Epic Banality

There were a number of occasions where I started rolling out my own blog software and wrote one or two entries to fill space and left them at that. Some of them I actually liked so, as I putter along with this thing I’ll publish a few so I don’t ultimately lose the text. Any post designated “B-side” is an old post from another time and another place. This one, A Peak at the Past was originally written on October 3rd of 2007. I was experimenting with Drupal at the time. Anyway, here’s the entry:

Aside from working on the server and playing around with this site, I did quite a bit of reading over the weekend and even some today and the day before. There are a few things I’d like to write about concerning American history and some political concepts but before I got to that I felt like I had to do some more research. Voting and juries were the two main issues. While I won’t be getting deep into those right now, there are some things of interest I wanted to jot down.

Voting in Early America is a nice article with a few very choice quotes covering the basic history of voting in, you guessed it, early America. It’s not terribly long and I suggest that everyone take the time to read it. Benjamin Franklin’s remarks alone are worth the price of admission. If you haven’t studied very much in the way of American History, you’ll probably find this article even more interesting than I did.

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I suffer from some strange compulsions. There are the simple ones, like the fact that all the cash in my wallet must be sorted by denomination and series date and if I see some change sitting on a table or a counter I feel the need to arrange it in an orderly fashion. When I eat at In’n Out Burger I have two hamburgers—no cheese—and some fries and consume them thusly: burger, fries, burger. It must be this way. I generally like symmetry and order and my family has categorized me as “anal” since middle school. There are also the more annoying ones, like the resulting problem with the table IDs in Wordpress and the mess and hell that is the newest version (2.6).

Wordpress 2.6 introduced something that, at first, seemed like a damn cool feature: it keeps track of revisions. Every time I change a post it keeps a history of the changes. Cool, very cool. That is, until you combine it with their auto save feature and the fact that it’s just not a very well thought out system. It could be—and I hope they do something about it—but for now it grates on my compulsion for tidiness in data.

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Every Wednesday the gang—which generally includes Guinness, Voltron, Hotelie, Soldier and K.L.—and I head to our favorite pub, Fadó for some drinks, dinner and a furious round of pub quiz. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, people form teams at their respective tables and compete for a number of rounds of trivial. At the end of the night the team with the most points wins some kind of award. At Fadó first place gets a $50.00 gift certificate and there are prizes for second and third as well. We’ve been at this “traditionally” for about six or seven weeks. We’ve never managed to win and even when we’re in the race, the last round always proves fatal. In the last round the points are doubled and we always seem to fare poorly.

Tonight was different. Tonight, even though it required some morally flexible means, we emerged victorious. The night began with naming our team which is given a theme each time. The theme for tonight was a made up 80s dance move. We thought that “The Blumpkin” had a nice ring to it. Over the course of the match we answered the questions pretty well, but for that extra added push in the last round we effectively bribed one of the waitresses for the answers. (She was a hot waitress according to K.L., and I have to agree. Incidentally, so does Guinness.) Also, I stole one answer (the number of stars on the Australian flag) from K.L.’s Blackberry. So, we’ve got unclean hands now. We also have a $50.00 gift certificate.

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I know there are is some kind of prevailing idea that maligning someone who has recently died is tacky, but I have to say, when someone dies in a way that’s all too fitting for their lifestyle or position, I just can’t help it. If this person has worked for the current White House administration then it’s worth bonus points.

Tony Snow died today. It was colon cancer that got him. All I could do was laugh when I read the headline this morning and exclaim out loud to my monitor, “Well Tony, that’s what happens to a man when he’s completely full of shit!” I realize that’s not a universal truth since the entire administration and everyone working for Fox News would be being radiated in a cancer ward somewhere, but still it’s nice when the grim reaper claims someone in a way that’s all too fitting. If only Dick Cheney could drown in a drum of crude oil. (For the record, I’m aware of the fact he’d been dealing with cancer for a long time, in fact I exclaimed the same thing when I first heard about it.)

Anyway, good riddance. One less Washington DC politician, one less media jack off, one less Republican and one less conservative.

Today marks two months since K.L. and I managed to solidify the particular parameters of our association. The story is short and amusing.

I had been invited to a party that a buddy of mine was putting on and I basically asked K.L. to be my date. We were together for most of the party and I can’t count the number of times someone asked me, “So, is that your girlfriend?” This question posed a problem for me and revealed the most sensitive spot in a budding relationship. If I answered yes that would be presumptive but I didn’t want to say no in a manner that was like, “Definitely not!” So I did a lot of fudging and humming and ha-ing. K.L. recounted as recently as last night how amused she was that I was being “grilled” and she was being left alone concerning the matter.

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With the 2008 election rearing its ugly head, I find myself viewing it with the same hopeless dispassion that I viewed 2004 and 2000 with. If there’s one thing the Bill Clinton to George W. Bush transition taught me—no, reinforced since this is something I already knew—it can always get worse and generally will get worse. To many people though, our current president has set a new standard for rock bottom and a lot of people think anything will be better. Do not, whatever you do, get caught up in this snare. There is no such thing as rock bottom.

The current “leader of the free world” is a bumbling fascist who is practically drowning in his own cronyism. He’s a war monger, a religious fanatic and a man who has the spoken eloquence of Beavis and Butthead. (”Heh, heh… heh, heh… we’re gonna bomb Iraq. Bombs rule! So do nachos.”) He’s also managed to have the kind of personality that could get him elected as the Governor of Texas and that, in and of itself, has a volume of implications and not one of them qualify as good. If you want to understand the true intellect and quality of George W. Bush you need look no further than the people who still support him. I realize 2 digit IQs make you special, but that’s not something anyone should really aspire to.

So now we’re left with John McCain and Barack Obama. Oh, joy. Oh, rapture.

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If I was to say that K.L. was weird, she’d be the first to insist that was not the case. She’d say, “I’m original, not weird. I can’t be weird because I’m normal.” Her mother agrees with her assessment, though I have some feeling if a vote were taken among those who know her, the consensus would favor my evaluation. She’s weird, plain and simple. Allow me to submit an example that took place last night.

K.L. came over to my place, as has become customary, and we simply laid down in bed together. It wasn’t long before she curled up and rested her head on my stomach so the back of her head was facing me. So far, so good. This is a typical position for two people who interact in a romantic capacity. Things became decidedly abnormal when she said, without looking back, “I like stomachs. They make so many interesting noises.” I don’t remember the exact order of events that followed but I can say that I said that she was a weirdo, she asked me if I could “feel it” in reference to the noises that were being made, commented on liking what stomachs “said” and when I got up a little later I suggested we change positions so I could listen. (Yes, I get that I’m weird too, but I make no arguments to the contrary.)

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Like many people out there, I used to know everything. I knew what was best for me in all circumstances, my parents were dated and simply couldn’t understand what I was going through and I was a beautiful and entirely unique individual that the rules applied to in a different manner. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all unique, just like everyone else, and as such you can’t statically apply the life experience of one person to another, but what you begin to understand as 30 looms is that experience certainly has its place and shouldn’t always be ignored.

More than just listening to words of the older an wiser, today I’m reflecting on how much my personal perspective on so many things around me has changed in the last ten years. This was brought about because earlier today I opened up contact with an old friend whom I had a falling out with a little over three years ago. The details of the falling out are unimportant, not only because no one needs to know them for the sake of the points I’m making but because, the truth is, they’re generally unimportant. They were important when I was turning 25 and had to be right and everyone who disagreed with me was wrong. They aren’t now.

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“I’ve never cooked shrimp before,” she said, looking at all the little gray crustaceans scattered about on the table. “They look horrible raw.”

“They do,” the master chef responded, smiling softly at his apprentice. “Fortunately, they become a very nice shade of pink and sometimes orange after they’re cooked. Ironically, I’ve never really cooked shrimp before either but I’m sure my experience with other things will work just fine here.”

The two went to the main table, an old oak monstrosity the chef had possessed for many years, and began to shell the shrimp. The clear outer casings were discarded into a trash bin and edible portions were placed into a large glass bowl with a mild brine mixture in it.

Once all the shrimp were shelled and placed in the bowl, the two allowed them to sit for a while. During this time the apprentice suggested, “We should probably wash our hands. You know how I am.”

“I do,” the chef responded as he walked to the sink, turned on the water and lathered up with a bar of mango soap. She followed and did the same and once clean, she reached under the sink for a bottle of lotion she kept there.

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I hate flying. Actually, that’s not true. I’m indifferent about flying. When I’m in a hurry to get from place to place, it’s the best method of travel. What I hate—and I mean I hate—are airports. I never liked them pre-TSA and now, with the whole Homeland Security nightmare, it’s worse and it continues to get worse. I’ve never flown with ID and still do my best not to, though I fear my days are numbered in that regard. For those interested in the policy change, it can be found on TSA’s website.

Why on earth does someone need ID to get on an airplane? What does it prove exactly? I’m not opposed to better security scanning and random checks and such. Those are fine since they actually accomplish something. If I’m carrying an explosive in my bag, checking my bag will theoretically prevent that explosive from getting on the airplane. Checking my ID will not. This obsession with ID has become a point of insanity in modern life. So, let me explain my most recent fiasco.

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