SavageDem

"I don't belong to an organized political party – I'm a Democrat." – Will Rogers

Category: Meanderings

  • ‘Tis the Season

    Just some randomness going through my head today whilst participating in economy-building activities (aka Xmas-shopping). Overt displays of generosity and selfishness both seem to become more abundant at this time of year.

    An example of the former: I was late getting going today, as I had an entire list of “to-dos” to complete on my first day of Xmas vacation. I was driving (only made it about 200 yds from my home as the proverbial crow flies; about 1/4 mile via road) and trying to multi-task placing my (newly acquired) Bluetooth headset over my ear. Mea culpa, I was driving too fast (not overly fast, but too fast for conditions) as I took a 90° RH turn on almost-glare ice roads (temps of -10°F tend to do that to snow-packed surfaces). The rear-end of my Ford Fusion floated out, and I was unable to recover it in time to prevent sliding nose-first into the neighbor’s snow-covered lawn on the right side of the road. Hindsight being 20-20, I should have added a touch of gas to pull it out of the slide (being FWD), but instead had just backed off the accelerator. Ach, what are ya gonna do?

    Not given to histrionics – no comments from the peanut gallery – I figured that I’d just clear the snow away and back out. No big. Kicked snow from around both front tires in no time flat, but the car still wouldn’t budge – just a spinning right front tire. Then proceeded to clear snow from around entire front area of car. Still wouldn’t move. I then realized that it had ridden up on the snow enough that the tires weren’t making solid contact with the ground – just barely touching. I had just resigned myself to walking back home to get a couple shovels to dig out when the cavalry arrived in the form of John, a pickup-driving neighbor (whom I did not know). For old-time’s sake we tried the push-and-spin-tire routine, but that was fruitless. John then offered to give me a lift back to the house, which I was grateful for. Not that it was that far, but I was in a hurry to get my errands done, and especially wanted to get to the post office before the crowds arrived around noontime! And it was still a few degrees below zero… John whisked me back home, I grabbed the shovels, he brought me back, and we dug the car out in about 60 seconds. John continued on his way, and I on mine.

    Now this wasn’t a radical thing; John didn’t save my life, pull me out of a burning house, lend me a kidney (mmmmm…kidney pie), or any such melodramatic thing. He just performed a very simple, straightforward, genuine, unselfish act of kindness. For which I was very grateful. And it made me reflect on the nature of the season.

    To the counter-example: I was later in my sojourn ensnared in god-awful traffic in the parking lot of REI (an outdoor & sporting goods shop, for those uninitiated). Construction had closed one entrance into the lot, and competition was fierce to get in and out of the parking area. I started to back out of my spot only to have a woman race up behind me to gain access to the exit road. As soon as she moved, I started to back up again, only to have a guy in an SUV studiously ignoring my protruding rear-end (the car, not me!) and brake lights – “I see nothing, nothing!” – pull up directly behind me, blocking egress. This happened one or two more times before I was able to complete backing out and effect my escape. Far more important that these people make haste in their getaway than to allow my partially extricated vehicle to leave. Just plain rude if you ask me.

    Many other far more engaging tales abound of woman’s humanity and inhumanity to woman (and man’s to man, and hermaphrodite’s to hermaphrodite, and all possible combinatorics of same), but it was these humble examples I experienced today that brought me to rumination on said topic. And a gentle reminder to me to try to be more John-like every day.

  • Borneo intangible fruitcake

    There. I did it — I think.

    I was recently ruminating on the ability to do, say, or experience something unique. This thought process was touched off when I pulled out an old cassette (yes, some people still have these!) to run through the car cassette player. This particular tape was bequeathed to me by a friend circa 1986, and has a bunch o’ tunes on it that reside nowhere else in my music library (a condition which I mean to rectify). In fact, this tape introduced me to several artists and genres that influenced my musical growth – although some would not view it as “growth” per se – and radically changed, essentially, my life. Artists such as Billy Bragg, The Proclaimers, Voice of the Beehive, and Morrissey inhabit this tape, and this simple spool of magnetized metal oxide particles on polyester (a Maxell XLII 90 – I always bought these!) shaped what I would listen to for the rest of my life, and in doing so, broadened my horizons incalculably.

    ANYHOW…back on point: I had not pulled out this tape in many a moon, and was reveling in all the great tunes I had not heard in some time. Whilst jamming to Blush by The Hummingbirds, the thought popped into my head that I was most likely the only person in the world – and thus, the Universe! – currently listening to that song (although I am not taking into account parallel Universes or quantum states). I calculated the odds as pretty good: an obscure – my most standards – Australian band that hasn’t been together in 15 years, unknown to probably 99.9993% of the world’s population (and I assure you, that figure was derived in a wholly scientific fasion…), and receiving zero – or approaching that – airplay. I did have to factor in the Internets (all of them). And I was mildly surprised to find that some other persona aficionada a la música had placed a video of this tune on youtube (said link listed above). But as the last comment was left over a week ago, and there had been only 4,353 views in over 14 months – only about 10 per day – I felt it was safe to say that it probably wasn’t being watched at the same moment at which I was listening to it on my retro car stereo.

    To be unique in a world of 6,000,000,000+ souls – and that’s only the living! – is a difficult thing. It is almost assured that someone somewhere is doing what you’re doing, thinking what you’re thinking, eating what you’re eating, viewing what you’re viewing, etc. So I felt – for one brief, transcendent moment – the awesomeness of “doing” something (however small) that no one else in a span of untold light-years was.

    Which then brings me to the singular title of this post: I am quite convinced that this series of words, in this specific order, has never been uttered – or written – before in the history of humankind. Uniqueness. Something for which we all at some time strive.

  • Never get involved in a land war in Asia!

    …but only slightly less well known is this: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

    Sorry. Total chain-of-consciousness stuff. I was thinking that we’re involved in a two-front war right now, and that led to thinking about land wars in Asia, which led to the entire quote from The Princess Bride – a great movie (and book, obviously. Quick aside: the movie is pretty darn faithful to the book for the most part. Some literary license is taken (notably Shrieking Eels instead of sharks), and detail is left out for the sake of not being a two-part movie, but otherwise…pretty good).

    Anyway…I was just reflecting on the fact that besides the obvious war being fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’re also fighting a war here in the U.S.: a war against tyranny and for continued freedom of speech, thought, and action. Obviously everyone doesn’t view it that way; the right-wing crowd thinks that they’re just trying to implement the “correct” policies for everyone. What they fail to consider is that their beliefs are not universal truths. Christianity is not right for everyone, nor should everyone be forced to adopt it. Homosexuality does not impinge on the rights of anyone, and should not be legislated against. Racism and ethnic prejudice should not be a part of any free society. Liberty doesn’t include laws taking control of a woman’s own body away from her.

    Dictatorships and societal oppression have historically been implemented by rulers who “know what’s best” for the people. They really just know what’s best for themselves – power.

  • It’s better than accidentally switching on Faux News…

    Can we just grow up? Instead of whining to the FCC, why don’t you complain about the world-wide glut of mourning over John Paul? I don’t wish the man ill, but he’s just one person. Where’s the outrage, grief, and empathy for the plight of the 300,000+ killed in Darfur, the thousands and thousands killed in Iraq, etc.? Maybe if folks had 1/100 the concern about their other fellow men (people) we’d have a much better world…

    Associated Press
    April 2, 2005

    POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y. — George Morton got a surprise when he came home from mass on Palm Sunday and turned on public access television. rton saw a tape of a striptease contest — a far cry from the usual public access programming of local meetings and talk shows.

    “I thought, this is terrible,” Morton said. “I don’t get HBO or anything like that.”

    Cablevision said Thursday that a “program switching error” had occurred.

    “When it was detected, the programming was removed immediately,” Cablevision spokesman Bill Powers told The Poughkeepsie Journal. “We have taken appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.”

    Morton said he planned to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission. The mistake affected customers in four counties.

  • Stand Against Injustice

    Sexism, racism, classism, and plenty of other –isms are alive and well in our society. We tend to think that things are coming along swimmingly, and that our biases and prejudices as a society are diminishing. But the spectre of intolerance still lurks, and with an federal administration that seems hell-bent on moving us backwards, we have to be more intentional in our efforts to promote the equality for all mantra upon which our nation was founded.

    I live in Minnesota, which has been considered for some time to be a fairly liberal state, one with many progressive thinkers (notwithstanding our current mystifying slant to the dark side with Norm Coleman, Tim Pawlenty, and a slew of others). Even so, I can on an almost daily basis hear folks conveying fear of and slurs against Mexicans, women, homosexuals, Indians (Native and “Far Eastern”), Muslims, etc. It’s not isolated. It’s not a thing of the past. Anyone that denies it is either a) naive, or b) lying to themselves.

    We recently had an adult education session in church to discuss this topic, and shared anecdotal stories. Virtually every adult out of the 25 or so present could relate a recent incident of prejudice (racial, cultural, sexual, religious) that they had witnessed. It was disturbing to hear how prevalent intolerance still is in our society, yet also a wake-up call that we have a lot of work to do.

    Our own government is engaged in a poorly-concealed campaign of injustice against Muslims, racial profiling is rampant, and women are still penalized in the work place merely because of their sex.

    Injustice is alive in America. Do we really want to be the “Land of Liberty – For The Select Few“? I didn’t think so. Stay vigilant. Don’t be afraid to speak up. Promote justice for all.

  • You might call this a pet peeve…

    Okay, so this has bugged me for a long time: are architects stupid, or do they just lack common sense? This is mainly rhetorical, as they obviously need some intellect in order to obtain the prerequisite pieces of paper required for putting “Architect” behind their names on their business cards. But I sometimes wonder…

    The reason I wonder is that it seems that nine out of ten men’s bathrooms were designed without one thought being given to even a vestige of privacy. Now, I know that men are pigs, but I choose to believe that I do not always wallow in the sludge of accumulated men-dom; that is, I think that I can (occasionally) rise above the popularly-held stereotype of men as possessing little more social grace than your common garden-variety swine. But architects either believe otherwise, or just fail to consider it (in which case I think that they should immediately be expelled from whatever fraternal organization to which architects belong).

    When I choose to urinate, I expect to do so in at least a semi-private locale. This privacy is frequently denied me due to the blatant lack of foresight (or utter stupidity) of aforementioned architects. Have you ever noticed how many restaurant bathrooms have doors that open to completely expose the Urinator? (not to be confused with the Terminator) Now, tell me: do you enjoy being on display while you urinate? Oh sure, I know some people have a fetish for that sort of thing, but I think that’s a distinct minority. Unless I’m really missing something.
    How hard is it to think just a — wee — (pun intended) bit ahead and:

    • put up a privacy partition, or
    • make the door open on the opposite jamb, or
    • re-design the opening so as not to expose the occupants?

    Let’s see:

    • Four years of private college: $120,000
    • Two years of architect graduate school: $20,000
    • Letting me pee without being observed by everyone at the bar: Priceless.

  • Conflicted

    Man, I have trouble with this! I’m not a huge TV watcher, but there are a couple of shows that I dig. I don’t have the luxury of setting my schedule to see them when they’re initially on, but I do have the luxury of having a DVR that lets me time-shift things. The things that I usually have on the hard drive are:

    • Gophers hockey
    • Malcolm in the Middle
    • 24
    • Arrested Development (Alas! No more.)
    • The Simpsons

    Now, notice any correlation? They’re all on the <insert unmentionable> Fox channel! Even the Gophers are on Fox Sports! Talk about internal conflict! The most right-wing, unpatriotic, fractious, slimy network in the world, and that’s whose shows I’m watching! Which is very interesting.

    Now, if we were to rank these in order from liberal to conservative, we’d have The Simpsons and Arrested Development at the left, Malcolm and Gophers in the middle, and 24 towards the right (this Dem still likes his action flicks). Now, I’m definitely not going to call Fox “Fair and Balanced”, but I’m amazed that they broadcast some of this stuff on their network. Some folks claim that The Simpsons has a contract negotiated that prohibits executive interference in their scriptwriting. Perhaps that’s true. The episode I just watched tonight (from a week or two ago) was centered on gay marriage. Fox was pathetic enough to run a disclaimer prior to the show (“The following episode deals with gay marriage. Parental guidance may be appropriate.”) Now, they don’t need disclaimers to show any of their trash reality shows centered on sex, or for any of their trash biased reporting, or for any of the violent content portrayed daily, but they feel threatened enough to put up a disclaimer on a show about gay unions? As Bugs Bunny would say, “What a (bunch of) maroon(s)!” But they did run it. And I’ve got to believe that this episode would have most of the abortion-clinic-bombing/Creationist-teaching/wife-beating/gun-toting/racist/Bush-voting dumbasses foaming at the mouth.

    So maybe I can resolve my inner turmoil by believing that there are some good gals (and guys) working on the inside at Fox. Sort of like the French Resistance.

  • Ve still vant zat money, Lebowski!

    So, like, welcome to the blog, eh? It’s obviously not anywhere near complete yet, but a guy’s got to start somewhere! So the operative word(s) is baby-steps.