If Obama didn't exist we'd have to invent him

He has certainly re-energized our politics, no doubt about that and we probably wouldn't have heard of a Tea Party Movement without him. My friend and I were talking about Alex Jones and Glenn Beck yesterday and he seems to feel that while the bulk of what they're saying is right on they're also riding ($$$$$$) the wave of The Crisis and while we don't know the exact nature of Alex Jones' financial status he has probably made more money off the New World Order than anyone. Now we hear that Alex Jones has distanced himself from that Michigan Hutaree militia group which I guess the finer point here is that by your wayward actions you distract from the real threat the NWO poses or maybe Alex Jones is kinda like the Hef of politics objecting that one offshoot of his thinking may be too hardcore and gynecological for his tastes. There's gonna be a Tea Party in my area at the Westchester County Center on April the 15th, glad to see we still have some spunk left as a country but to the average person who merely scans the headlines in between his two jobs this might all get glumped together, certain key words and phrases from the endless political gabfests on cable, the Internet, the more traditional papers and any other media you care to throw in (a sampling of key words & phrases: Alex Jones, Tea Party, Hutaree, John Birch Society, protestors at funerals of dead soldiers). It's all a part of this vast Right-Wing Universe out there so maybe we need something other than the Nolan Chart to find out where we stand and oh yes, there's no polar Left-Wing Cosmos out there, no yin and yang to balance it all out, no Leftist Fringe at the other end of our political solar system according to the leading lights of the msm. It's simply THEM vs. US (the Moderates).

When not to play the race card

If you absolutely suck as a worker don't play the race card. Makes no sense. You come in late, you call out sick and you're otherwise a lazy bastard, you're not Nelson Mandela. Even your brothers are going to say "but you suck." If you're a good or fair to middling worker you can give it a shot but to constantly be espousing your racial theories at work to anybody who will listen when you absolutely suck as a worker it's, how shall we say setting people up, dig?

Conservatives obsessed with reading Ole Gray Lady editorials, then they have to write about it in their own counter-columns. The New York Post even has an occasional Times Watch (does the Times have a Post Watch?). I've solved this problem a long time ago, I go out of my way to NOT read the New York Times. Works for me and gets me through the day. Letting a Times editorial or Op-Ed ruin your day, it's a form of conservative masturbation. I've given up those habits, I'd sooner read the TV Guide or Popular Mechanics. A corollary to this is the Frank Rich problem or the Maureen Dowd problem, I don't read them either. It's amazing, I feel so much better and I've lost 10 lbs.! you can too.

Thoughts on pluralism

Pluralism is ten people in a room watching a Geico caveman commercial and all nine of them find it hilarious but the tenth one goes "God I have these commercials! they're so stupid" and there's a silence in the room and a couple of people politely leave to go to the kitchen shaking their heads, "holy shit." Pluralism is one guy out of 100,000 who likes his nuts tied up. Most of the time it's the minority who feels the strongest about his position (ok so you don't like the Geico commercials, shut up already!) and while we like to tout our pluralist society it's problematic. We even disagree on the essentials, what form of government we should have and instead of the Statue of Liberty maybe we should just have a giant phallic symbol in New York Harbor (I'm open to various metaphorical interpretations here, fire away). Pluralism by its very nature means lack of consensus, I mean Saty thinks the rest of us are nuts. There are folks who disagree with each other out of principle, the contrarian mentality. It's like Neo and Agent Smith, I'm the pole who has to combat your pole, I have to cancel you out and will disagree with you at every turn. You have these at work and it's not my imagination but some people actually feel threatened by you, by your competence, your intelligence. Call this the undertow but you can actually feel it, that vibe in the room, the resentment. Pluralism means working with some people who are spaced out all the time. Said to a guy at work the other day you ever get the impression everyone here is in LaLa Land and he agreed. They say pluralism is our strength but to me it also shows we honor and celebrate those with faulty thought patterns, I mean you don't know a fetus is a life yet?

What are your thoughts on pluralism?

This rush into health-care "reform" reminds me of...

...the rush into the Iraqi war. We had no choice in the matter, it was a done deal, forces beyond our control, it was out of our hands. I feel like with Bush and now Obama no president represents me anymore, the independent conservative along with independents of other stripes who are supposed to swing elections. Bush was a polarizing president, Obama even more so and it's like all you can do is sit on the sidelines and watch the show go by. By signing that final version of the health-care bill yesterday Obama has also in one swipe of the pen federalized the whole student-loan industry. At what point in time will we stop saying this is not socialism? In both cases we paid dearly, the one in lives lost and the other a debt problem to hand down to future generations. To be as nonpartisan as I can about it Obama has none of the virtues I am looking for in a leader: deliberation, reflection, nonpartisanship and the rest of the statesmanlike qualities. Then again neither did Bush and that old old conspiracy theory that the money-masters are really in charge of the world well that's not so radical anymore. So fight on Tea-Partiers but you're really the flipside of the liberals who were against going into Iraq. If something's gonna happen it's gonna happen, there's a reason for it. Call it the Matrix of Politics, you don't even know you're in it.

Thoughts on unions and a note on Idol

Unions: fine in theory, worse in practice

Conservatives usually focus on larger more general issues when bashing labor unions, the fact they are a left-wing group supporting only left-wing candidates whereas for me it's more personal. The long and the short of it is that unions make it harder to fire people and this seems to be the main complaint I've heard from young conservative managers I've worked under. I worked in a library once, a heavily unionized job if there ever was one and it was my job to do Interlibrary Loans (ILL), alot to do as books come from all over the country. As a sidenote this is weird but one of the more popular books that folks reserved was Mortuary Science but anyways this young woman, we'll call her Amy, was being groomed to be my backup on those days I was off or on vacation. Took a week off and enjoyed my vacation thinking all was well and when I got back found out she called out sick the entire week so I had more work than ever. Seems to me the director should have been able to take her aside and say to her "look Amy I don't know what's going on in your life right now. Maybe it's all legitimate but you do have this pattern of calling out sick alot and you cannot in my view contribute effectively to this workplace. Good luck in your future endeavours." So that's a problem. Now do unions make for a better work environment? You would think so but having a long and varied resume myself consisting of union and non-union jobs I would say the answer is in large part no. Shit still happens that's not supposed to happen despite your dues going up all the time and believe me they will. I've also found that many times and it doesn't seem to matter what the issue is unions will often side with management, a form of collusion it would seem. Another interesting sidenote: even during the last Democratic primary season our union early on endorsed Obama over Hillary so what does that tell you?

& there's something weird about this season's American Idol

Admittedly I'm a heavy channel-surfer but from what I've caught it goes like this. A week or two ago this young singer named Didi was up and she belted out her version of Linda Ronstadt's 1974 hit "You're No Good." Now I'm not a professional when it comes to these things, had no musical training whatsoever but to me it was near perfect so Randy got the ball going and the rest always seem to follow his lead. It's all kind of Stepford Wive-ish so you're getting that vibe of something not quite right but anyway Randy said the girl was "pitchy" his fave phrase this season and the rest, Ellen, Kara and Simon all panned her with nothing good to say. Now I've heard another viewer say they've had flat singers come on to rave reviews so clearly something's up and it ain't with the singers who are singing their hearts out. DJ's the next morning often scratch their heads. Your options:

(a) Is the show fixed?
(b) Are they all on drugs (mysterious substances to be determined later)? or
(c) Have they simply made a fetish out of being quirky?

If I may tie this all together we will now be forced to buy health insurance or else pay fines and they're calling this health-care reform, you got Al Sharpton talking about an N-word tape that only he has seen, ya got your Idol problems, unions are no good and things in general just don't make sense. If you're a woman Tiger Woods wants to slap you around and choke you a little according to the latest e-mails recorded for all posterity by his porn mistress so that goes beyond being your average red-blooded American male imo. It's not just that we're liberal or conservative, always have been, but we seem to be meandering along in this fog of weirdness we're in, not quite thinking straight and not knowing we have a problem and if you point out that something is wrong then you're from the Fringe ((key up weird Suspiria music)).

Don't be scared but I'm introducing a new phrase myself here (btw don't try this at home, leave it to the pros). Re the whole health-care debate white liberals have niggerized the discussion, the whole process and that basically means they wanna keep the old racial flames burning. You see if you niggerize something you can never really put our old racial history to bed, let folks live in peace and Move On. You're in crisis mode all the time and you like it, it's your whole goal to agitate, to roil, to masturbate people's minds.

a'ight?

The Polarizer

It was a depressing way to go to bed. Wasn't gonna but caught some news before I turned in and they really shouldn't do this on a Sunday night, shit like that is bad for your sleep but I've got other things on my mind. The final score in the House of Representatives on the health-care bill was 219-212 with 216 needed to pass and 34 Dems voted no. I was informed that all Republicans voted against it which in and of itself is interesting because if even a RINO voted against it that tells you something right there. Though they're treating this as historically as important as the passage of Social Security and Medicare (and it is) the fact that 34 Democrats voted against it shows you're a polarizer even within your own party. Now the very subject of polarization I'm not gonna get into here, I don't always think it's a bad thing but that would require a bit of a dissertation. Having glanced at the comments to yesterday's blog abortion is one of these subjects but I think the major complaint I had last night before I went to bed was this: admit that you are a polarizer rather than the healer, centrist and reconciler that you campaigned as. That president Obama is a polarizing president is a perfectly apt and objective description despite your politics and at this point he needs to explain this polarity that drives him, that animates him rather than continue to pretend he is some type of pragmatic moderate reaching out to all sides (where is tort reform in the final bill?). Bill Clinton was a triangulator, felt that need more to come down somewhere in the middle (then again he had a Republican Congress) but Obama is none of that, he is pure ideologue. Politically he is a cyborg, he came into existence with a mission, cannot be reasoned with and his mission is nearly complete. None of this is to judge him as a person but the will of the people seems hardly even a factor in his thinking. Used to be conventional wisdom was that politics in the end was all about compromise, to use a TAO phrase "the moderation of ideology" but Obama represents a new political breed with a kind of Nietzschean twist. He is Superman beyond all that, beyond our usual understanding of the paradigm of politics. His vision is so clear it approaches metaphysical certitude and again all those wonderful things he campaigned on probably played a large part in getting him elected in the first place but it wasn't his essence and it fooled alot of people who are now suffering buyer's remorse. The nonpartisan guy, the moderate, the centrist, the non-ideologue, the healer, the reconciler, now we know although some of us knew all along that's not him. He is the Polarizer and he's just getting started.

Personal autonomy, where libs and cons differ

I'm gonna break this down in porn terms but apply it to the abortion debate. Philosophically where do you come down on this issue of personal autonomy? Take a young woman who decides to become a porn star. That in and of itself shows a totally autonomous decision, a decision many of us are not even capable of. What it says is I don't care what my mother and father think, if I embarrass them, what my family and friends think, what my pastor thinks, what my neighborhood thinks, what society-at-large thinks. I would go so far as to say it's not the right decision, a very poor decision but a totally autonomous decision. On some level you have to admire if that's the right word the sheer audacity of the decision. So here's the issue: is it more important for a decision to be the right one or a totally autonomous one? For a decision to be the right one you have to take into consideration other factors besides your own personal autonomy, for instance how will this affect my family, my standing in the community, my career and a myriad of other factors. The totally autonomous decision-maker says I'm gonna do what's right for me. So for a liberal or perhaps the better word is libertarian the totally autonomous decision is also the right decision, the two are interchangeable by the sheer fact of it being autonomously made. For the conservative, the socially conservative ones anyway, the right decision and the totally autonomous decision are not one and the same thing, indeed the latter smacks of moral relativism because YOU are the sole arbiter of Right and Wrong. As applied to abortion the fact of someone practicing total autonomy is the attractive feature here, it's very Randian, but to not consider other factors would seem to show the lack of a complete decision. So where do YOU come down on this issue of personal autonomy? it's not so much the wrongness of the decision that is of importance here but the fact that you can make it freely without undue societal and religious pressures, that's the libertarian position anyway. I can kind of guess soapie's position on the matter but maybe some things are deeper than any one philosophy can offer. I'm in a philosophical frame of mind.

Get it all in now

before they pass a law against it. Do what you can while there's still time. Stock up on soda, hit the restaurants before they're forced to serve hospital food. Have your doctor you've known all these years stick his finger up your rear one last time before some government bureaucrat does it. Eat drink and be merry, enjoy the Whatever before the Whatever becomes subject to legislation. In the Future the only thing it'll be legal to do is to kill a fetus.

Digital TV

I don't have even your basic cable so basically I have two sets, one upstairs and one downstairs. Of course I have to use a converter box but that's not the problem. Upstairs I get some programming I can't get downstairs. Watching a very interesting program the other night on Ch. 58-2 on the last flight of Amelia Earhart (hey Jess was she murdered?) and so go downstairs later to play around in the kitchen and can't even get that channel on the other set. On the downstairs set I get at least five channels playing the exact same Spanish show then I get a whole slew of Korean fare I don't even get on the upstairs set. No great loss there but I'm just sayin' In the old days ALL tv's had the same basic channels, now with the much-heralded digital transition they scan differently depending on which part of the house you're in (maybe the attic gets porn, dunno). I don't get the Home Shopping Channel on either set which I was kind of into only as a last resort when all else failed to interest me. I think it's all a conspiracy to make you buy cable so that Verizon Fios guy can come to your house. How is this progress?

The politics of obesity

They say we conservatives are reactionary by nature, real ornery bastards, player-haters and so because one of our own isn't sitting in the Oval Office we're still pissed even taking it out on Obama's missus. I'm talking of course about her signature issue, her campaign against childhood obesity. Sometimes a person annoys the hell out of you and you don't know why, there's something lurking, taking shape in your id and btw I count myself among the ranks of the annoyed. It's like when you have a boss at work and he's not really bothering you that day, even buys you a cup of coffee but his mere presence still annoys, irritates, rankles. Maybe he's overly into his job so you just look at him, it could be he's a dick and doesn't know it but it's something. So what bothers US about Mrs. Obama's drawing attention to what is a legitimate public-health concern? If I may diagnose the problem here first off it's that despite all the liberal commenters of late on the blogs saying that nobody's brought up the need to get the government involved, quite the opposite your bullshit meter's arrow is in the red zone. OF COURSE they do even if they haven't said it yet. Already in New York State there's a proposed or about to be proposed bill to add tax to soda the whole idea being to deter people from drinking the evil carbonated beverage. Then ya got another politician who has proposed that salt be forbidden in the preparation of foods in all New York State restaurants so your bs-meter is right on target as usual. Yeah but there has to be something ELSE that bothers us about Michelle Obama. Maybe it's this: how important IS this issue of our nation's chubsters anyway? How do you rank it? For me speaking honestly it's nowhere near the top of my list, the husketeers will always be with us and some of them are kind of charming anyway in an Our Gang sort of way, that's what gives society its character and the thought occured why doesn't she just start with Oprah Winfrey? set some type of moral example for the rest of us but the long and the short of it is she just plain annoys the hell out of us and we don't know why. I know I'M annoyed, she's put me in a bad mood like when you have skid marks in your drawers at work and just want to call it a day and go home. Maybe the whole Fat Acceptance Movement has a point, just accept us for who we are and get on with your lives. So we've made the decision in Life that food is more important than sex, what of it? are we bothering you? It's like when you were a kid and you were watching tv and your Mom said it's a nice day why don't you go outside but there was some hot chick on Hee-Haw that you wanted to see first. That's fine when you were a kid but now that you're full grown if you want to keep your pajamas on all day and stay in bed W(ho)TF's business is it of anyways? She wants to raise our kids for us so I guess my Mom and Dad were evil because when they went food shopping every Friday night they brought Devil Dogs home (ok that was Dad's idea). Alot of black women are fat as hell but there's something human and earthy about them, they don't have this NO TRESPASSING sign at the shrine of their pussies like the supermodels do (John Mayer and Leo DiCaprio yes, YOU got a court date buddy).

Please just go away and take up crocheting or something. First ladies and their causes, wouldn't be a bad idea to have a single guy in the Oval Office some day.

So what animates your conservatism?

& please don't say Smaller Government, we all agree on that, but what other things? For me some of my animating principles:

free speech -- I have over the course of time distilled a new (really old) Z-Principle and it is this: In the majority of cases free speech should prevail. Sounds simple enough but much more complicated in practice. Now I know free speech is not absolute but what would happen if we had near total free speech? Well we'd have to Deal With It and so if (a) nappy-headed 'hos didn't cause (b) the planets to spin out of their orbits then there really is no need to lose sleep over it. (a) Pornography may be debasing but if it doesn't lead to (b) cancer than it clearly falls into the zone of protecting freedom is more important than shielding us from bad taste which segues nicely into,

freedom (to not have a police state) -- A few years ago I was in the village of All-White-Dobbs-Ferry-on-the-Hudson going through one of those personal problems/issues phases in my own life kinda mulling things over on the street corner, wasn't bothering anyone, walking around a little and this young woman comes up to me and goes "you can get arrested for that." Now if memory serves my penis wasn't exposed so she must have meant loitering even though I was only there for about 20 minutes tops. Now here's where my animating principle comes in: does this mean Dobbs Ferry NY has a police state? no but if the village adds 50 more laws like this one then you do wind up with one so I am opposed to not only a police state but anything that foreshadows a police state. Beth's Nolan Chart doesn't deal with stuff like this but I'm filling you in anyway which leads up to my third animating principle:

minimal laws -- It's simple logic, the more laws you pass the less freedom you'll enjoy so for me the test is so simple it's astonishing even to me: if the old law or proposed new one doesn't serve some dire need, in short if it's not absolutely necessary to the survival of, to the cohesion of a just Society as we know it then it shouldn't become law or if a law should be repealed instantly. Again if my presence in Dobbs Ferry bothered that young woman that much then Deal With It, this in a village that used to allow later-term abortions where one young Spanish woman even died undergoing the procedure and they covered it up but I'm the problem apparently.

pro-life -- Not even coming at this from a political angle per se but just feel it would be better if Society were pro-life. The opposite leads to all types of things like the time I boarded a bus in White Plains and the driver had to take some time to lower the handicapped ramp so a disabled guy could get on and some young woman in the back started bitching about it. That be an ugly society indeed and again my bar here is very low, despite our political views on abortion why can't we all be personally pro-life?? Doesn't seem much to ask and if we did we could all tell the bitch in the back of the bus to STFU!

spend spend spend -- Don't feel guilty about it, you can't take it with you. If your Mom tells you you spent too much on a carton of ice cream don't worry about it. On a related subject it's also why I'm against dieting, well the more spartan ones anyway. There's an anti-pleasure principle at work here which goes against the fundamental ethos to just enjoy Life (God must be scratching His head). John Tesh is a major spokesman of this approach but he must be driving Connie Selleca nuts. Spend $$$ and enjoy Life, you'd think this would be obvious.

war only as a last resort -- When I was growing up leaned heavily towards the pacifist position, thought two countries fighting each other was the height of human stupidity and folly. Call this the Henry David Thoreau position but as I got older saw the world was far more complicated than this but despite my much more reasonable older self the invasion into Iraq didn't cut it for me. To be willing to give up your own life for your country is the height of bravery imo, takes your moral character to a whole new level but it has to be absolutely necessary not because Dick Cheney thinks it's a good idea.

Just so we're clear.

Maybe he deserved to be Borked

Robert Bork, conservative icon, should've been on the Court and helped knock down some pretty bad decisions but I've really changed over time on this one. So I was channel-surfing the other night and came across some program on the Constitution on NJN2 the theme being Original Intent vs. an Evolving Constitution. Now I'm mainly an originalist myself but I actually found myself agreeing with at least one of the libs on the program who said what conservatives like Bork really want is to go back to the old days and by old days I mean olde olde days, it's like they're stuck in a kind of Victorian timewarp, Oscar Wilde got what was coming to him and so there was Bork saying things like liberals have used the courts to push sexual permissiveness, "to create a right to homosexual sodomy"...ok let's stop right here and have a cup of coffee.

Of all the conservatives who populate our corner of the conservative blogosphere, hell conservatives in general, is there anyone out there who seriously wants to put folks in jail who have gay sex with each other? I'm not talking morality here, views and tastes differ but should anal sex even be included within the purview of the Law? I'm finding Bork's brand of conservatism to be......disturbing. So what other acts of a sexual nature is Bork ok with a legislature or political body banning? Bork strikes me as the kind of guy if his wife was starting to do something orally creative he'd push her off and go "get off me bitch!" Again when it comes to Sex opinions definitely differ, folks do all kinds of freaky things in their early years they may regret later on in Life but again this properly falls within the sphere of personal morality and not law and I think most folks would agree it's far better to ponder on your life and the things you should or shouldn't have done in the safety and privacy of your living room with a bottle of Jack with the tv droning on in the background than in a prison cell.

Think of the conservative landscape out there and how vast it is. At one end you have your libertarians smoking dope, getting down with the 'hos but otherwise being very fiscally conservative and for smaller government. In the middle you have your soccer Moms, PTA gals, committee members who go food shopping, attend the neighborhood watch meeting, vote straight Republican (even McCain) and otherwise live quiet suburban lives. Then all the way around the other side of the globe intrepidly trudging across the frozen tundra in Viking helmut sun glistening off their frozen snot are folks like Bork harpooning those buggering homos on the ice floes. Welcome to the Land of the Strict Constructionists, guy masturating in an igloo, tie him up on the sled and bring him in. So how did we all manage to inhabit the same planet?

Not getting hired because of something you said online

This seems to be one of those rather hot topics that pops up every now and then in the press and the spin is always, well it seems to be that you should never post anything online for fear that it will come back to haunt you in any future job search. Z-man has multiple problems with this not the least of which is Free Speech but here for a typical column offering the typical sagelike advice in this area are some excerpts from conservative Kyle Smith's piece yesterday in the New York Post, Idiocy in the age of Facebook - Why you're not getting that job (2/28):

"A 2009 study concluded that 45% of employers were checking social-networking sites before deciding to hire someone...The news gets worse: of that 45% who bothered to check 80% subsequently decided not to offer a job to someone based on info found on the sites..."

Aren't there enough violations of free speech already? I know I know an employer can technically do this I suppose just like a radio station can fire someone for saying whatever but it's a violation of the spirit of free speech and when you look at it cumulatively we're a less free nation because of it. What you do online is your own creative domain and this is likely to have a chilling effect on bloggers, commenters, MySpacers, Facebookers etc. It's absolutely no business of the employer how much you drank at a party last week let's say or what conspiracy theories you believe in. It might be unwise to post some things but that's for your fellow commenters to point out, to issue TMI Alerts but it still shouldn't invalidate you from further consideration to fill that post. Besides don't these pencil-pushing geeks have anything better to do?

"As an employer you're taking a chance when you hire someone. No one wants to hire a dud. What if someone has a history, say, posting rude sex jokes about women on his Facebook 'wall' and turns out to be much the same around the coffee pot? No sex-harassment lawyer is going to fail to tell the jury that...

OK stop right there!! Time was, in recent memory in fact that most conservatives questioned, criticized the growing field of sexual-harassment law but ever since we learned from Paula Jones that Clinton has a crooked member they got with the program. I'm calling them out on this. Kyle bro you're smarter than this, many people are not going to repeat in the workplace what they say online ("geez Madam can I pour some blueberry syrup on those pancake nipples of yours?"). If there's one thing I hate with a passion it's this fashionable politically correct conservatism, neocon pussies all.

"...The No. 1 reason not to hire someone discovered on social-networking sites, though, is 'provocative or inappropriate photos'."...

Again too much time on their hands, not worried enough about the Bottom Line which may be part of the reason why our economy is in such a shambles. You got time to worry about this shit then pluck your candidates from a convent. Are such images right or wrong? that's purely in the eyes of the beholder but what Kyle doesn't mention is it can surely work in the opposite direction and I'm sure it does. When Tiger retires and runs his own golf equipment company I'm sure he would take it into consideration.

Then there's some crap about divorce lawyers just love Facebook and college admissions offices are getting into the act too. Z-man's position is simple -- if a boss cares this much about your online activity then he or she is probably not worth working for in the first place.

The philosopher class

Lately I've been watching this special on Immanuel Kant on NJN2, some Harvard professor named Michael Sandel giving the lecture. Exciting class, kids all look interested, lots of Asian faces. Like my friend and I were talking, you're in Barnes & Noble and there's some hot Asian chicks in the cafe studying who won't even give you the time of day because their parents have used YOU as an example of what not to wind up to be in Life, you're a walking warning in your Dockers and Reeboks stimulating their studies. There's just something about You, you give off the stench of a low-wage job and don't seem confident. You pass a chick in a department store and your eyes wander and then she notices and buttons up that top button, you must be giving off a stalker vibe or something. Interesting stuff as when we are told that Kant thought it always wrong to lie so if a murderer knocks on your front door and asks if your friend is in there you have to tell him the truth, give up your buddy, something to do with you can't make exceptions to the categorical imperative. Philosophy usually takes weird turns every now and then like when I was in Catholic high school our professor talked about solipsism a Greek word which basically means there's no objective reality outside of your own mind which means that nothing else exists, you just imagined it all which if true then why the hell did I get up to go to work these past 25 years? You can't blame it all on the acid, that didn't come until 1938 but you did have your morning glory seeds, the heavenly blues so don't know if some of the Thinkers accidentally ever swallowed some. I was thinking about the nature of dreams the other day, what are they exactly? Now we all know that dreams ain't real but they do exist on some level otherwise you wouldn't have dreamt. Put another way a dream happened somewhere, it took place in your mind, your imagination which has its own existence so if it makes you feel any better maybe Kim Cattrall really did kiss you au naturel in the kitchen. Arthur Schopenhauer, said to lead the philosophical school of thought known as Pessimism. What I wanna know is did the philosphers ever work a day in their lives? hold down your typical 9-5's or did they just think all day? We've all heard "if a tree falls in a forest and there's nobody around does it make a noise?" and along these lines what's the deal with this tinnitus-type state? I mean the noise is real to me, what am I nuts? Maybe I'm gonna give my two weeks at work and spend the next few years pondering the finer points of Life but getting back to dreams if you work in your dreams as I do shouldn't you get paid for it? Maybe we're all dead. BTW Obama ain't real folks, get over it!!

The Plowman Cometh

Having been through two blizzards so far this winter, second one worse than the first what happens is you shovel all day, clear your space out so you can just glide on out early the next morning for work and just as you're done for the day all proud of your achievement and go in for a hot toddy HE comes. But he already came once or twice already but NOW you have an embankment of snow to deal with, the third or fourth embankment so far this day as you already cleared away the first two and you'd better get to it now 'cause in a day or two that baby's gonna be rock hard. We need a meeting of the minds here and folks generally fall into one of two camps:

I clearly belong to the second camp. Once the plows have been through the side roads twice that's enough, any rational citizenry would say we'll deal with the rest and we will. Get that snow out into the road which apparently you're not supposed to do anymore and the traffic will take care of the rest. This can't be though because of the first group, larger and more influential and these yahoos will raise holy hell, write letters to the editor and call their representatives if the plows don't come through their street in a timely fashion. Yes they have a point, your tax dollars at work should help your streets get clear but how much plowing is too much? Are they overcompensating for fear of the yentas?

I have no easy answers. All I knows is my body is sore and all for naught.

Faith systems

Along the lines of Patrick M's recent musings on faith, what faith system coincides most with our own personal belief system this is a tricky one indeed. I would go so far as to say all the official faith systems of the world don't do it and fall short for a good many of us. Born and raised a Catholic, still am, theologically very in sync but there are problems. Just to choose four issues out of a hat:

Birth control: Tried understanding the Church's position on the matter time and again, damn I tried but I think what it all boils down to is this - Sex is a fairly animalistic act when you get right down to it and the Church is trying to ennoble it, pleasure for pleasure's sake even to express love become issues so have the act be open to the transmission of human life at all times even if it means winding up with ten kids if you're the sensual type...anyway don't recall the subject even popping up in the Bible per se so I'm very Sola Scriptura on this one you could say. It's a blue moon moment, me and the Rev. Pat Robertson see eye to eye on this one.

Confession: Probably my biggest difference right now as the oldtimers accept it without question but never got the logic here - Jesus or God won't forgive you and you'll wind up eternally damned even if you're sorry as hell unless you explain in morbid detail to the priest your most personal sins and then some. Makes me instinctively uncomfortable, is there some kind of prurient interest at work here and you have to question any person or institution that says thou shalt not use your mind, put reason away and obey blindly. The priest will point to the confessional, you'll feel like a million dollars afterwards, my thing is why do you need to know?

Transubstantiation: The doctrine that when the priest at Mass consecrates the bread and wine they literally turn into the Body and Blood of our Savior. Not buying it and it has cannibalistic overtones, why can't it just be symbolic? Literalism can get you in trouble but they insist so again it's not a perfect fit.

Priestly celibacy (and hell why don't we throw in nuns too?): Doesn't seem nat'chal to me at all, why can't a woman or man bring you closer to God? Of course you could be a layman and practice what I call involuntary celibacy but I don't want to get into that right now. Valentine's Day is hard for lots of folks but at least we have it as a goal, for them the goal is illegal.

So call me a cafeteria Catholic if you want, it seems to be the only way. Soapie HAS TO have some thoughts.

Obama has plumbed new depths

Now at first blush this is gonna sound grossly unfair to President Obama, you can just picture Bill Moyers using it to illustrate classic right-wing hate in the blogosphere on his Friday night journalfest. Well let me first link up Malcontent's excellent commentary today on the matter:

http://malcontentralphie.blogspot.com/2010/02/this-is-not-joke.html

Glenn Beck talked about it this morning on his radio program and I'm gonna predict this is gonna be a HOT TOPIC in the conservative blogosphere and why shouldn't it be? There was a DNC fundraiser last night in where else? Washington DC and Obama made the point that a national health-care system is still dear to his heart worth fighting for and then he talked about a letter he received concerning a young woman, 41 years old, who worked for his campaign while fighting breast cancer for four years and finally succumbed as he put it. You see she had no health insurance, couldn't afford the tests that could have saved her life but here's the kicker and I'm quoting Obama here: "and she insisted she's going to be buried in an Obama t-shirt."

Malcontent's point, she worked for his campaign so as a campaign worker why didn't they pay for her health insurance thus saving this poor woman's life? Now here's my dark thought and I'm not afraid to express it though I usually don't go down this road: they wanted this young woman to die, hell they could've gotten one of their Hollywood buddies like George Clooney to pick up the tab. It's a kind of variation of Rahm Emanuel's let no crisis go to waste, let no death be in vain when it can be used for political purposes. Does this seem harsh to you my judgement here?? not when you consider that some people deliberately use a moral calculus of let someone or a few people die for the Greater Good, think of all the future lives that could be saved. It's utilitarianism with a Machiavellian spin. It's only one life and think of the tremendous political gain to be reaped!

It's creepy, it's perverted, it's evil but it doesn't surprise in the least. Imagine if Ronald Reagan had said "she's going to be buried in a Ronald Reagan t-shirt", it would have diminished the man and it goes without saying that the liberals would have had a field day. Obama has corrupted rational political discourse in this country which in itself is a feat, the whole thing is shocking in its banality and predictability. It's far worse than anything Bill Clinton ever did while in office imo and that's saying something so shame on the Obama Administration!!!

How much should you criticize your own side?

First off I have to admit I do it on a fairly regular basis myself but then again they make it easy. I mean when you have Savage the other night saying Toyota's current problems were caused by some kind of corporate conspiracy, a sort of war games to do in a competitor something has to be said. Ditto for Rush who had to spin the Haiti relief effort around to it's gonna show Obama to be compassionate and humanitarian and will help him even more among African-Americans. What does this have to do with the price of onions? it'll only get the Oxy talk going again. Then you have your simmering tensions between the SC's and the FC's usually over abortion with the FC's taking offense at the SC's always waving a dead fetus around in everyone's faces but I don't know how you can discuss it otherwise in the end, it'd be kinda like talking about gay marriage and leaving out the anus (oh I know it's so much more but just being a little Aristotelian here). FC's tend to lump all SC's together but there are varying gradations of social conservatism. I myself find gay marriage to be unpleasant whereas I find abortion to be repugnant, a violated sphincter is preferable to a, ok no getting around it, a dead fetus and so...When Judie Brown of the American Life League said that studies show that married couples who once had premarital sex with each other have higher divorce rates than those who didn't well I don't navigate those waters. Same thing when James Dobson of Focus on the Family interviewed Ted Bundy only to "prove" the point that porn makes men into this so I really don't wanna get that far away from land ya know? There is much in the conservative movement not to like and I can't totally refrain from criticism of my own side, that'd be hard. It's like waking up with a woody, you have to go with the moment. The links I've chosen show the full range of conservatism which is why I chose them, agreement not being a prerequisite as it is at alot of blogs to get a link going (Opus Dei - sheesh!). So really the Question Before the Board today is when should we criticize our own side? but also how much is too much? It's not an easy answer or issue for me, there be those who be team players and those who don't even like to be on the same team. For me it has to do with those uncharted waters again. Now all of us are perfectly capable of a brain fart every now and then and if you think you're not believe me we're gonna find something but Pat Robertson has a string of 'em so it makes you wonder. There are uber versions of both Left and Right and everything in between so take it away.

The Avatar Phenomenon

Haven't seen it yet. My friend did, he's really into this kind of stuff but if anything they come out on DVD so fast now I'll probably see it then at my leisure. Yeah my friend thought it was great and all, definitely a watchable flick but this James Cameron guy saying he had this concept of the blue humanoids since he was a kid, trying to give it that old artiste edge, the creative genius who had to wait literally years for IT to all come together like it's the greatest opus of all time or something. Yeah right!! my friend said he probably had some weird acid trip and just wrote it all down afterwards. Highest grossing film of all time surpassing even his previous work Titanic and I'm sure when the DVD finally does come out it'll be chock loaded with Extra Features including that annoying option of watching the movie with the acclaimed director's commentary throughout. They always have those extra 10 unedited minutes too like I hear Mel Gibson has an extended version of The Passion where you can see Jesus getting scourged for a few extra minutes or so. Anyway wha'd'ya think?

& then there's Racial Matters

Having had a long and varied career, I always seemed to choose the career path of The Whatever, didn't matter what job I had this theme ALWAYS came up and for the record I never brought it up, others said it to me:

Ya got yourself a real slacker who happens to be black and he's getting away with it whereas the white person always has to bring in a doctor's note when he or she gets sick, gets chided for arriving at work ten minutes late, didn't complete the workload that day and it's like wha'happened? you know the deal but the black worker seems to be getting away with it. In fact NOTHING ever happens, never written up and so someone makes the off-the-cuff remark that it's because he's black. Now stop right there, is it really this simple?

Boss: "Moussa's late again but I'm not gonna say anything because he's black."

Is it really that conscious of a decision? I'm not saying it's not or can't be but if it is that's a truly sad one. Then again my brother worked for years with a self-avowed lesbian who regularly told customers off, even dropped a few f-bombs and nothing ever happened to her but still I have a hard time making this calculation.

I was mugged when I was twenty and long story short I'm riding around with two white cops and they start making racial comments. Now I'd never do this, didn't condone what they said but a part of me understood. They deal with this crap day in and day out. Wanna reduce white racism reduce black crime since the one drives the other. Folks don't wake up and decide to be bigots, have a Jew in a yarmulke rob a Sunoco station for a change. The Oscar-winner of a few years back Crash dealt with matters of race honestly which surprised alot of folks and the racist white cop played by Matt Dillon turns out to be a little more complicated after all by the end of the movie but the other thing is conservatives who in matters of police brutality against blacks routinely and as a matter of course always side with law enforcement. Hit the nigger on the head and they'll come up with an excuse. Funny but you used to be able to joke about STUFF like when I worked in a flower shop in the Bronx and one florist was gay and the van driver and he got on the Abner Louima case (for those of you out West he had a plunger rammed up his ass) and so the van driver goes to the gay guy "you'd like that wouldn't you?" and nobody got offended or threatened to sue but that was back in the day.

You'll often hear that those who use crack cocaine (mostly black) are dealt with more severely than white hedge fund managers who snort coke but as a correctional guy I was talking to once at a party said "ya wanna know something? don't do drugs." Then there's the high % of blacks in prison, much to-do has been made of this by Jesse Jackson but the only injustice here would be if most of them were innocent and railroaded and so choose a different career path like Thomas Sowell or Bill Cosby did.

Howard Stern has probably said far more racially insensitive things (insensitive to whom?) than Don Imus but Stern has wisely made the decision to never apologize and so they forget about him after like a day or two and Rumor Has It that's he's poised to replace Simon on American Idol. Now how did this happen? It's because there's nothing the racial pimps love more then when you grovel and when I saw the I-man do this I was like will you cut it out you big pussy!! that only fuels them on more and how can you prove that one of the girls on that team wasn't a ho anyway? all of a sudden everyone's a spokesperson for Focus on the Family signing chastity pledges. It's wrong to stereotype of course but how come in porn you always see some big black buck with a twelve inch dick (don't they come any smaller?) plowing some 18-year old black girl who looks scared like they just plucked her out of some CVS and she has a baby to support? the thing is more like an anaconda looking for its hapless prey & btw how come Jews and other groups don't address each other by their respective slurs? "how's it hangin' kike?" "tell the spic, he'll get the job done."

Worked with a white meatwrapper once (or is that meatrapper?) and so she got pissed one day because she had to unload some U-boat and I'm just walking past: "fucking motherfucker!" she said but what's with the adjective? Isn't it superfluous? I mean isn't motherfucker strong enough to stand on its own and why do they always have man hands these women meatpackers? imagine them caressing your organ after a hard day's work but I'm gonna cap it right here...

Motherfucker!

A serious aside for a moment - the anti-smoking and pro-marijuana movements

The commercials against smoking are getting more and more ghoulish. The latest has some black woman who lost her fingers to the stuff (???) and another one that claims smoking can cause irreversible blindness. Now I'd have to say this is pure propaganda, dubious at best but to refute it would take the better part of a blog so on to the larger point. While the anti-smoking movement has taken on new heights, new passion in public-advocacy zealotry at the very same time the pro-medical marijuana movement is picking up steam, has made some inroads of late such as in the Garden State where then outgoing governor of NJ Jon Corzine just signed it into law. The smoking evil/pot good formula seems a very contradictory public health message at best, seems to me the only two logical options would be either smoking bad/pot bad or smoking good/pot good. In my experience and this is purely anecdotal as I always stress but people I have known who were regular pot users did not become more mellow over time. In fact it was quite the opposite, their personalities seemed to change for the worse, harder to get along with although when I drop comments like this at other blogs where the subject comes up the pot legalizers always deny this. Then there is the rather common practice of dealers adding more dangerous ingredients like PCP to the mix unbeknowst to the pot user. In fact judging from a workplace situation I've been blogging about recently angel dust and ANGER are inextricably intertwined and the person under its influence will often develop an angry and paranoiac view of the world, major anxiety on an existential level (the downplayers will chalk this up to alcohol but alcohol doesn't have those effects, not all in tandem that is), these people over here are enemies see? they need to be dealt with. The person sinks into a weird depression, he or she may go to work in the morning with a strong sense of impending doom, becomes detached from his environment, detached from himself (ego-death) and detached from reality, enters a dissociative fugue state.

So to cap it off a young person absorbing all this like a sponge might form the not unexpected conclusion to not smoke but that it might be preferable to light up a joint every now and then especially when you have a medical condition (geez you'd think modern medicine was lacking in the pain management department). The other thing the pot legalizers will often throw at you is that you want to throw their sorry asses in jail. I don't, I'm half-libertarian on the issue but I have the right to opinions, impressions formed over the years by social interactions with these people and on balance I find them more annoying than your traditional drunk. In that case the effects wear off by morning whereas imho pot somehow alters the chemistry of the brain, how we think and it's been said marijuana is like a low-dosage of a psychoactive like LSD, it's mind-altering at least to some extent and in my observations not in a positive direction.

Potheads should be free and contributing members to society, just thought I'd offer a few thoughts counter to the pro-pot trend .