The past week or so at the day job has been ridiculous. Huge deadlines on a huge project that’s really too huge for the timeline it was scheduled for.
Of course, it does look like we’ll be close enough.
It also looks like it’s driving me utterly mad with stress.
So, the feed is a bit… odd. Because that’s how my brain is working (when my brain is working).
I’ll let you see for yourself.
Here’s the feed…
Technically, I’m still in the middle of my last big road trip.
See, the plan was, after quitting my job at the newspaper up in rural NY (with nothing else lined up), I was going to cruise down to Atlanta for Dragon Con that year, then continue on down to Florida for a little while, bounce back up North (stopping to visit people I knew from college who were in the DC area), then up through northern New York, across the top of the country, down the West Coast, and then back east via a southern route that would let me hit Florida and DC again.
I’ve kind of been “stuck” in the DC area for the past decade. Never did make it all the way back to the northern New York bit. (Even though I’ve been back to my home town nearly two dozen times.)
So, technically, still in the middle of that trip.
Over the past week, two road trip ideas have come up. One, a return to New Orleans with some of the people I was with the last time I was there (back in 1993). The other, prompted by the Clown Motel item in today’s feed, with some new(er) friends who I know are good for adventure (and share a quirky, twisted, sense of humor).
I’d like to say both of those will happen.
But the last bunch of road trips I’ve tried to do have fallen short of actually being do-able. Mostly for financial and scheduling reasons. Sometimes, the problems aren’t even mine (though lately, they really have been).
Sure, I’ve managed a Dragon Con trip or two in the past decade… but not recently. And there was that one trip out to the Jersey Shore (which only happened because a friend has a house there and a bunch of us were heading out from the DC area). But, other than those rare exceptions and the trips home for holidays, my wanderlust has been seriously unsatisfied.
I like travel. I really, really do. What I don’t have is one of these three things at any given moment: time, money, or traveling companion(s).
Currently, money is tight and I have no paid vacation. I do, though, have a handful of people willing to go on two different trips. A while back, I had time and people, but seriously lacked money.
It feels like I really can’t win.
Not that that’s going to stop me from continuing to dream about these trips and trying to pull off miracles so I can do them.
Miracles are just few and far between these days.
(As are teleporters… which would really make all this a moot point.)
I’m pretty open about the fact that I have a number of issues with the politicians who run the country, supposedly in our name. This has been the case through at least two decades at this point.
Today there’s a story about a state senator from Virginia who’s resigning from his position. Ostensibly in order to take a more prestigious political appointment and to clear the way for his daughter to get an appointment that his current position precludes her from holding. That in and of itself is pretty shady if you ask me. I mean, the guy was elected by his constituents to represent them and now he’s all, “Oh, yeah, sorry about that… you won’t mind if I just step down and get a better job over here, right?”
Not. Cool.
What makes it even less cool is that he’s a Democrat and his resignation tips the balance in the state legislature in favor of the Republicans.
So, not only is he stepping away from the position that those who voted for him entrusted to him in order to pursue personal gain and glory, in doing so he’s effectively handing over his hunk of the legislature to the other side. That’s totally: “Oh, yeah, and by the way, all that stuff I promised I’d represent you about… I’m just going to go and let it get outvoted by the people you disagree with the most. That’s not a problem, right?”
Doubly. Not. Cool.
The final tidbit is just icing on the cake at this point. Seems that shiny new appointment he’s leaving for (and the one that his daughter will get now that she’s free to do so)… those are positions that the Republican party has the power to grant. The scuttlebutt, of course, is that they’ve offered him these perks in order to get him out of the way so they can have a clear path to blocking anything the governor wants to do. So we can just tack on to the above two sentences, “Oh, and I’m doing it at the behest of those people that you sent me here to fight against.”
That’s just beyond “not cool.” That’s downright traitorous. That’s a full and complete middle finger to anyone who voted for him and trusted that he’d continue to do the job he’s been doing for years.
This is politics at its worst.
It makes me a bit ill to read about it.
Because it’s happening right in the open and, so far, no one’s doing anything about it.
Because it’s nothing new. This is how things have “worked” on and off since the first time one person was put in charge of the well being of others.
But just because it’s nothing new doesn’t mean it has to be business as usual. We know about it. We can do something about it (even if it is just shun the hell out of this guy). We can speak up and say “This sort of thing is more than unacceptable, it’s reprehensible.”
And, really, I hope a lot of people in Virginia do that.
I hadn’t heard about the Macklemore thing until I saw a post about it yesterday. (He’s since apologized.)
I was left wondering if a bit part of the problem was that we’re not willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt when they say “I really didn’t know.” (Especially if no other public action we’ve ever seen indicates otherwise.)
“Everybody ought to know this one,” people say. “After all, dehumanization of the Jews nearly led to their total extermination in Europe.”
But everyone doesn’t know it.
I know this for a fact because it was one of my big gripes about Star Wars The Phantom Menace (the critter that owned Anakin and his mother: filthy, big nosed, always looking for a deal and/or a way to screw you over, talking with an obvious Semitic accent… same with the obvious Oriental stereotype at work on the Trade Federation reps). Only about half the people I talked to–and they spanned ages from a decade or more younger than me to a few years older–recognized the stereotype.
And the only reason I recognized it was because I’m interested in how minority populations have been oppressed and demonized over the years. It’s not something I ever had explicitly shown to me (though I can recall some implicit statements, usually in old jokes, which I never really got at the time I heard them).
What should really be the case is: No one should know.
No one should immediately think that a character with a big nose is a jab at the Jews. The simple fact that so many of us still immediately see that means that dehumanization is still alive and well.
It’s definitely along the lines of the “Check your privilege” stuff… where we need to remind ourselves that we’re not always aware of everything that goes on inside our own heads, let alone what forces are at work around us.
I grew up in a surprising diverse area for being in the middle of nowhere. Yet, even with all the talk of racism and prejudice on the news in the 80s and early 90s, I’d never seen it play out until, I think it was my Junior Year of high school. When a buddy of mine, who happened to be black, had his locker vandalized with racial slurs.
We were all just dumbfounded… him especially.
The world got a little less bright and shiny that day. And I know that I became much more aware of a lot of the subtle undertones in a lot of my learned interactions… in a lot of the humor that was out there… in who did and who did not interact with one another.
It was more than a few years after that when I learned more about the hunk of hometown that I lived in. One of the local long-time families was cleaning out an old barn and came across one of the original signs that used to sit at the entrance to the area I lived. It said, if I recall correctly: “No Niggers, No Jews.”
And, yet, I’d gone at least 16 or so years before I saw any of that sentiment in action. So things must change somewhat… or, at least, it’s possible to grow up right in the middle of it and not know… until it hits you square in the face.
That’s not to say that, when it becomes clear there is harm/ridicule intended, decisive action shouldn’t be taken to reprimand the perpetrator… but the first step should always be “Dude, this is how I’m seeing this… is this what you mean?” And if the answer is “Really? No!” then a wee history lesson may be in order. In another generation or two, the stereotype may fade even more.
Now, people who actively live down to the stereotypes about their culture/race/whatever… I have little sympathy for them, as they’re part of the overall problem. Possibly worse than the people what use those stereotypes against the larger group. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.