Cranial Space For Rent
Perfect for Brain, Commercial Space
Parte the Firste

As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I'm taking a World Since 1945 class right now. In addition to broadening my view of American actions in the Cold War period, it has reawakened my interest in political and historical discussion.

I don't think I recognized the loss of this section of my brain and the degree to which dust had covered a formerly active section of my mind. For example, on our discussions of the Hiroshima bombing: it occured to me that I am the sort of Catholic that would have dropped an atomic bomb on Japan. I had long ago accepted passively the position of the Truman administration that the bombs were necessary to end the war, a position that is in direct opposition to the Church's teachings on attacks of civilian populations.

Which points to an ongoing problem with my way of dealing with political and social issues, specifically a tendency towards tactical political thought action. That is, my concern with the "great issues" or what passes for such in American politics has always been centered around the political and ground concerns associated with them.

For example, Publius and I have always argued about abortion. He has some excellent points about the rights of women etc. . My opposition, in contrast, is centered on how this issue is hammering the party in the South, how people who otherwise support excellent candidates refuse to turn out for them due to their pro-abortion rights stance. I have sat in a phone trailer dialing for Democratic candidates and heard the same thing over and over again..."I think he's a great man, I respect him and agree with him. But he's anti-life and I can't support that".

Abortion isn't the best example given how polarizing it is, but my stance is the same on most issues: how can we win on it? How does a stance on a given issue affect us? Which raises another question..what, exactly, are my principles?

(looks at notes)

Wow, I'm only halfway thru what I wanted to post! How did this happen? Part two to follow.

A DAY LATE, A DOLLAR SHORT

So I missed my own self-imposed deadline...sue me. Wasn't that one hell of a post-convention layoff? I'm (attempting) to revive this exercise in creative writing in order to shake off the mental dust of my routine.

Two brief notes for the day:

1) I was asked today in my EMT class "Well, what do you want President Bush to do about (insert topic here)?!?". An increasingly common argument from the right...and I LOVE IT. "What would you do?" is a loser's argument.

2) I started my HIST 3305 course today. As an opener, my instructor laid out some of the goals of a communist state, the ideals they follow and how there are still people in the world who believe in the possibility of an ideal communist state.

To which one of my idiot classmates asked...

"Didn't Ayn Rand disprove communism?"

But for the lack of a soda, I would have spewed...

FROM: COMFRONTUSA
TO: ITT POSTWRITER

SIR STOP YOU ARE REQUESTED AND REQUIRED TO POST STOP DEADLINE FOR NEW POST WILL BE 15 MAY 2005 STOP GOD SAVE THE KING STOP

All quiet, no action on this frontage

Nothing new until tomorrow, folks. Recovering from a convention weekend.

We Interrupt Our Usual Programming

More tales of Southern class angst to follow, but I want to take a moment and mention one thing about the New Orleans disaster.

I am not normally a disaster news sort of guy, and to a large extent I think I'm in step with the majority of thinking Americans: wall to wall news coverage has made what used to be fairly sensational, say...murder and made it commonplace. The gluttony, the mass consumption of news slays the urge to know what is newsworthy and, in some, replaces it with a reflexive consumption of "breaking story" and "this just in".

Blase does not equal Zola this time around. I've been to New Orleans as a tourist, an intern and as a union organizer, drank thru the Quarter and brushed off fleas that leapt up from the carpet of the former mortuary that was the office of Local 100. I've felt the heat, smelt Bourbon Street wet and steamy after a midday deluge and stood with a mixed drink in my hand at 4am on a Monday morning not ten feet from the golden statue of St. Joan of Arc. And unlike any news story since the beginning of the second Iraq war, I have been totally unable to turn away from the coverage of this Pompeii-class tragedy.

Which is why I'm especially incensed by comments today from Speaker of the House and known Republican Dennis Hastert today that New Orleans should not be rebuilt. Would you be so damn willing, sir, to sacrifice your beloved Chicago to a second Great Fire?

What a horse's ass.

This American's life

5:30AM EST. I hit the alarm snooze for the seventh time, ending all hope of arriving at work anywhere near my goal of the night before we open. Rough night last night, had to hang around campus much longer than I planned due to a last-minute change of instructors in my most recent class.

Glasses: grabbed. Survey of situation: workable. With a whore's bath and a brief brushing out, I should be thru the door at the copy shop by 6:05. Thank God I thought to take some snackables to work or else it'd be more mall food for lunch.

To my left I see my wife, although I won't really see her until the weekend. She's not invisible, mind you, but her second shift work schedule and my first and second life aren't meshing well currently. We're sleeping on each other's time, I'm in bed long before she gets home and she's unconscious when I wake up. With luck, this will be one of those weekends where my days off will intersect with her days off and we can collapse together.

Got to get moving. Fifteen minutes later, I'm husling down the stairs three at a time to beat out an notoriously slow elevator. Out the door, into the car and on thru the predawn murk of extreme suburban Atlanta, on my way to the practice Purgatory: American retail employment.

"Who am I? Why am I here?"


Unlike well-read, intellectually savvy and politically well-connected Internet pioneers like Publius at The Third Estate, buying into the blogosphere was an impulse purchase. The proximate cause of this blog's foundation is the new "no anonymous comments" policy over at What The Hell Is Wrong With You?

If published accounts are to be believed, the blog phenomena began around 1997. In 1997, I was spending my valuable free time living off ill-gotten student aid, having taken a semester off from college by dropping all my classes well after the checks had cleared.

If anything, that would have been the time to log on and start yakking, with all the fire of idiot youth and a federally subsidised license to waste my time. Why now, when I'm three months from thirty?

I'm no everyman, but I do feel like where I'm at in the world is where more Americans are finding themselves these days, with a feeling like you're wading thru mud and if you don't sacrifice everything to the Big Push, you're going to drown in the muck, pulled under with the riptide on your way to an ignominious end.

So what do I do about it? I'm locked in, I'm committed, I'm on a course of action, a throw of the career and education dice that may (MUST) pay off. In the meantime, all I can do is something I never used to do: talk about it.