Enchanting Juno

A day in the life.

I just had the most amusing conversation with the census bureau.

She called - not that I think the census bureau is female, but this representative of it was.  She called because they sent me some damn survey a month ago. 

Which I ignored. 

Because it said census bureau not IRS, and who gives a fuck.  

It turns out it is mandatory (ish) and I have to fill it out every quarter for 8 quarters which is going to go SO well.

She started to make sure they had the correct mailing address and I said, no, no, I remembered it.  I put it in the pile of things I didn't really have to pay attention to.  Because of it not saying IRS on it. 

Which she thought was REFRESHINGLY honest.

I offered to move it to the pile of things to do AFTER I finish the pile of things I REALLY have to do.

But she said no.

And I said, so I really and truly have to remember to do this every quarter for the next eight quarters?  And she said YES

And I said AWESOME.

And she said I had a GREAT attitude.  Which made me laugh.

So I said I would put it on my pile of things I REALLY had to do SOON.

I kind of love her. 

I bet it only take 3 minutes to do.  Three minutes and a 1000 dead trees.

Hi! I'm a progressive.

I like that better than Democrat -which, as we have discussed, I am not really - or liberal which I am, but which is primarily, I think, social & intellectual in its application rather than political.  

I think government is useful to regulate and support human endeavor and human society and while I am not at all anti-business, I am opposed to unchecked free markets because people are greedy and short-sighted in fairly predictable ways over the long term and free markets are a pretty accurate reflection of this.

I'm not good at arguing though - I haven't enough historical fact at my finger tips and I tend to get mad and froth at the mouth and frown stubbornly over the underlying ethics of policy, without necessarily having an ability to turn my thoughts and feelings into words (I know the difference between single payer and socialized health-care, but I can't always express it under pressure, for example).

I had dinner with friends Saturday, spent the evening arguing - in a friendly way - with M.  While he says he is a Republican, I would say he is in fact a free market conservative of the old school, rather than a modern Republican (I keep waiting for him to notice his party has abandoned him).  We agree about nothing, but I think in a respectful way.  It was fun.

I thought I would share some of the things I have been reading that left me saying - Dammit, THAT'S what I MEANT - since then. 

Jon Carroll on Rachel Maddow:  My love is not quite so true, but I do appreciate her for saying things with humor and impeccable calm and well informed decency. 

Obsidian Wings (a fantastic site) on the role of progressive politics in creating a society we can enjoy living in.  

Shakesville on misogyny and the Pennsylvania gym murders:  If I read one more thing that paints the shooter as having been victimized by sexual rejection I will spit upon who said it.  I expect he had trouble getting dates because he was exactly the kind of psychiatrically ill person who would say, commit murder to make a point, and was creepy as fuck.  Blaming the 30 million women (right) who turned him down is just another way of avoiding taking responsibility for his own life and actions; women are not to blame any more than the Easter Bunny was.  Feministing on the same.

Shakesville on the media complicity in breeding poorly informed hysteria about health care change:  WORD

Lance Mannion on civility and disagreement:  follow the links if you have time.

FiveThirtyEight.com on the conservative/liberal political distribution in the US, kind of fascinating.

I am noticing that Paul Krugman is a recurring theme in all of this.  Excuse me while I go follow his blog.

Shakesville on the potential for fascism in the US.  For the record, I find this extreme, but it's very interesting, and an idea worth incorporating into your mental filter.

Ta-Nahesi Coates - who may just be my favorite blogger of all time - on the intersection of fear/racism/misogyny that drives explosions of violent resistance to change.

We do live in interesting times.

Trout for thought*

Sheep & Goats at large, I am frightened.  I know I am not alone, but the fear is so large now it is sort of preventing me from talking about anything else.  Have to say it aloud to start maneuvering around it.  So here I go: I am scared to death of what comes next.

I was going to tell you a funny story about the cat, but well.....that would be a kind of bullshit, yes? (It was a good story though)

Business is bad.  We've had three of the worst months ever - a term I keep having to redefine - in the last 8 months.  Our single biggest customer hasn't made a substantial order from us in a year.  Yesterday I cut people's hours 20% and my own salary for the second time. 

Today I have to rewrite my personal budget and decide if I can still afford to fund 100% of the healthcare coverage I offer the people who work for me.

Some of this is not my fault - the lack of liquidity in the marketplace is a far more effective illustration of trickle down theory than actual trickle down economics ever proved to be.
But the most paralyzing thing about what's happening is that some of it is my fault and that is not something I need to make any more excuses about.  I don't mean that in a self-immolating way, but yesterday I was hit in the face with the wet trout of truth.

I have been reading The Fluent Self on and off since JoVE first mentioned it and I find it a weird combination of compelling and repellent, in the way of things that have a message you do not want to hear.  I have been talking about feeling stuck for months.  Years really.  And the Fluent Self is about destuckification.  Terrifying. 
So I read and then avoid, read and avoid.  Yesterday, I read "It's Not the Economy" and this I cannot avoid, this is the wet trout between the eyes. 

Read it, I'll wait.

I have this love/hate relationship with my business - love the independence, really not  interested in the product.  Hate the responsibility, love the flexibility.   Wish someone else was holding me accountable, can no longer imagine working for any one else.  Unable to visualize how to transform it into something that is weighted more to the plus than the minus. Stuck.  Much rather think about yarn and perfume and books and love and friends and sex and cooking and the cat and family and ......

What I am living is more than duty and less than commitment, a fucked up middle ground that has bred a kind of panicked paralysis where I can come up with 1000 reasons why changing it for the better is impossibly out of reach and then sit there for another six months screwing around on the internet and seeing it get that much more out of hand.

I think I have been waiting for the universe to make the decision for me. 
My therapist often reminds me that silence is not empty and now I need to add the correlary that inaction is a choice.

I had this revelation yesterday as I read up on marketing consultants: everything I respond to in the material I am reading is aimed at people in creative fields - people selling their ideas and their work rather than goods.  I am not a creative person, but I do not need to be an artist to work in a field with more congenial values.  I need a new career.  But instead of letting this one implode and losing years to self-loathing, maybe I can transform it so I am not hanging my employees out to dry, so I can close or sell or grow it so it gives me more options, not fewer.

(Message to the universe:  I am looking (actually, actively, looking as opposed to hoping vaguely one falls from the sky into my parking lot) for a non-sleazy marketing consultant/business consultant with a perspective that straddles both my industry and my personality. 

And as long as you are looking into stuff, Universe, a yoga teacher. The right kind.  kthxbye)

*title belongs to the goddess Claudia

the yarn we make OWNS the yarn we buy

Also I want to make sweet sweet love to the Verizon network specialist. 

My Internet went bye-bye Sunday night and unusually, it was not a problem with the Mac Time Capsule thingy, which is a clever idea but an imperfect technology and takes a little time off every once in a while, but with the FiOS router which lost it's IP address. Or something.  I was describing this to someone last night and I said iSp which makes me feel retroactively dumb, but there's no way to correct that without looking like a tool, so I shall have to just soldier on.

Tech A got a little forest-for-the-trees about the presence of the secondary Mac router which no-ma'am-we-cannot-provide-support-for, and obviously the failure of the Mac unit to communicate with the Verizon base-station is not our problem.  No matter that I pointed out that a) it had never had a problem in the previous 6 months of my FiOS relationship and b) it was the VERIZON router that was failing to be seen wirelessly, not the Mac router, which was, by the way, disconnected and unplugged and no longer involved IN ANY WAY, please imagine it to be in Tahiti enjoying a pleasant rest, and yet the Verizon router was still not working, let us focus on that please.

He was a Mac hater and once he exhausted the 2 steps on his script had nothing to add except to explain to me that he found the Mac upgrades difficult.  To which I said, I would be sure to take that into account the next time I buy a computer, but it was rather late to do anything about it NOW.  Could we focus on the moment?

Fortunately he recognized the moment I was about to go from Forgive me, can you tell me what comes next now?  to WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CANNOT OFFER ANOTHER SOLUTION YOU MISERABLE SON OF AN ACRYLIC AFGHAN and passed me up the line to Tech 2, a network specialist, who helped me change my encryption, which had mysteriously reset itself and got me back on line in 40 seconds, at which point I professed my love and elevated him to the status of god.

I get antsy when deprived of email.  I am however, trying to spend less time on line.  Someone said something on Facebook the other day that struck a cord:   Am I going to get where I want in life spending 6 hours a day on Ravelry?
Now, I do not spend 6 hours a day on Ravelry, but I have been, if you add it all up, a little more involved with the ether than is strictly useful, or even healthy, for the last little while.  It is so easy to get distracted and read fascinating things and chat with friends and flirt with boys and look at Facebook and scan patterns and order shoes and cruise how-tos on any possible subject until suddenly, it's bedtime and you've been on your ass all evening and how did that happen? 

Life's Rich Pageant includes many things that are outside the magic box and this is good to remember.

In other news:

So, new president last week.  That was cool.  I am keeping the counter in the sidebar for a little while, I like seeing it at zero hour.  And I have added the White House Blog to the sidebar.  Someone asked me why I didn't blog the Inauguration/transition.  Truth is, I didn't have much to say:  It was a good show, I'm a fan, Dick Cheney in a wheelchair was noteworthy but in the end a bit unsatisfying (I would have liked it maybe if the earth had opened and Satan had come to collect his soul personally, but then, I only believe in Satan as a metaphor anyway). The speech was good, I got a bit choked up watching our new president's face assume the office - it was nice to see a political figure who takes that seriously, who has some gravitas.  I enjoyed watching the previous president's face while Obama indicted his entire philosophy of governance.   I was glad that there didn't seem to be anyone with a gun, I was on edge for the worst possible thing all the time.  And for sure, this is a remarkable moment in marking progress in race relations.  But only a moment. 

And nothing's fixed in a moment.  Racism and sexism still haunt this nation, and there is much work to be done to repair the errors of the past and build a nation we can all breathe in.   He's made a start I approve of.  It IS nice not to flinch with shame when the news comes on.   I really liked that that was the tone he took, no more easy solutions. Or non-solutions.

In a very positive way, I say....we'll see. 

Been losing yarn recently - the gorgeous gray Shetland I spun several years ago eludes me - I am trying to lay my hands on it so I can finish the last bag of locks and make a determination as to what I can do with it.  (Also I had a house guest this weekend I wanted to show it to).  No where to be found.

2 skeins, dk-ish to light worsted weight 2 ply, a bit sheepy smelling, answers to the name Freedom?  Seen it?

Also I made a thoroughly awesome and somewhat sparkly skein of fat fluffy yarn at SOAR.  Well I began it at SOAR in Maggie Casey's excellent retreat session, and finished it over Christmas (yay for remembering a new technique for several inert months.  Can't find my notes either).  Can I find it?  No.  I took it to the office for a daylight picture a month ago.  It's not at work any more.  It is in none of the usual places.  SUPER bulky but light and airy.  Natural gray with streaks of blue firestar.  Yarn I made the way it is ON PURPOSE.  And pretty.

 
It WAS going to be a hat.   A really, really good one.  The fiber was from Morro.  Sob.

I'm obsessed with gray yarn right now. 

The only knitting going on is slow progress on an old sweater.  Somehow I have made up my mind I need to finish it before I go on and lord, it bores me.  It's blue.  My favorite blue, mind you. 

Took this months ago when lady bugs were in season.  So it is even a LUCKY blue sweater now.  Not that you could tell by my progress. 

I want gray.  Or cashmere. Or new.  Or all three.  Or two of the three. 

I know, I know, start something.  But the thing I detest most about myself recently is the not finishing a damn rubbishing thing.  So it's a struggle for my soul now, not just a sweater.  Rassenfracking transitional stages.  Fucking evolution of the self.  Dammit.

I spun this weekend, that was cool. 

As the good doctor said to me recently, really, I am great.  I know how it might look from far away, but I am.  There are half written posts littering the place, posts that might even be good and worth reading, posts with books, and racism and growth and steam curled around cooking pots and books and lost skills and respecting history, but me, I have been as settled as the wind for a while and nothing is finished.  I might have mentioned it?

(I know the title makes no sense, I started out intending to write about the spinning.  Everything in the fullness of time, my poppets)

Be Part of History: Vote

I passed a lot of those signs this morning, in places I usually don't see signs for national elections, only local.

I love going to the polls.  I walked this morning - I usually stop on my way to work, but the street is torn up for resurfacing and I figured parking would be iffy.  And it's really not far, five minutes maybe.
I liked walking, seeing everyone getting going on their day, the purposeful slow drift of foot traffic converging on the housing complex that is our polling place.  Saying good morning.

I always go in the morning around 7:30 and I am usually among the first 40 voters of the day and out in less than five. 
Today I was voter 151, and waited in line for 15 or 20 minutes.  I was ready - ball of yarn in my coat pocket, cowl on the needles.  My neighbors J & D, across the room in the A-K line, were amused.  The woman behind me in a wheelchair thought it was a very clever place to keep my yarn supply.

That's what, 3x more voters before 8 am than usual?  Almost 4x? 

Love it.

I walked to the corner with a woman, I said hello and she asked me how I was.  I don't think she was expecting an answer, but I said I was fabulous thank you, and how was she?
She looked at me then, and said, did you vote?
I nodded.  And she smiled, and said, I am blessed. 

And we wished each other well and walked away from the corner in opposite directions with the same happy stride, the same swing of skirt hem, the same energy.  I am pretty sure we voted for the same guy.

Hope, Faith and Reality: A letter to my dad.

I detest George W Bush, this is not a secret.  The day I can take down the end-of-his-presidency calendar in my sidebar will be a happy one indeed, unless I have to replace it with a McCain one.

But it's been an interesting election cycle for me, one that has really clarified my politics in my own mind.  I posted months ago about the realization that I am not a Democrat.  When my brother called me the shame of the family after Bush/Dukakis in 1988 he was joking, but there's a kernel of truth in it.  I come from a long line of conservatives and I was educated to be one of them.  There's about 10% of me that walks around with a streak of elitism and reserve - it's often my first response when I feel out of my depth, a recoil and swift strike of impatient rebuff - another 10 percent that lacks confidence to put down the barrier and stake a claim on what I think is right, and the other 80% is rational, emotional, humanist, flexible, a little bit timid but always learning. 

I wonder weekly what my dad would have made of Bush.  He detested Clinton for his - well, my dad called it immorality, but I also think it was because Clinton is a highly accomplished and intelligent self-made man.  For men of my dad's generation and, well, class, sexual morality and morality are the same.  You just don't flaunt it, you're not common about it.   A discreet mistress is one thing, an intern in the oval office QUITE another.  
But he was also incredibly threatened by people who had it together to pursue concrete ambitions, who were motivated, organized, driven ...walking in tall cotton he used to say.  As if their accomplishments were a matter of luck only.
I make him sound terrible and he really wasn't - his whole life he was in conflict with the side of himself that thought this way and the side of himself that thought it was idiotic.  Which is why I think so much about what W would have done to his head.   Pop went to Yale (as his father and grandfather before him had), and he had nothing but contempt for the spoiled sons of legacy, skating on shallow charm and privilege, nothing but respect for the men there who were creating something from their own gifts and hard work. 

All my instincts from an early age were in opposition to this world I grew up on the edge of, but defending my ideas was incredibly hard.  My instincts bewildered him - though they were at least partly a product of his own dissatisfaction - and my inarticulateness about how or why I could think the way I did frustrated him.  I knew I disappointed him.  It took me a long time to learn the lesson of reading to develop instinct into opinion and being brave enough to argue about it.  A very long time.

So here it is Pop:

If you were alive I think you'd be voting Obama too, because what has happened over the last 8 years would make you weep.  I could be wrong, but everything you taught me about hard work, about responsibility, about decency, about MANNERS, tells me that.  But I am not embarrassed to think differently than you did anymore, so if you WOULD be voting for McCain, I would totally make fun of you. 
You can't even make the small government argument, because have you listened to the guy?  He hasn't got a principle left that he hasn't abandoned for convenience, far in excess of politics as usual, and his entire campaign is based on fear-mongering.  Let us not even speak of Mrs. Palin and her utter lack of knowledge, or principle or professionalism, and rejection of science or intellect as needful tools.
And if every fear-mongering idiot emphasizing the candidate's middle name doesn't make you queasy with the thinly veiled racism and narrow-minded panic over Otherness, then this time, I'm disappointed in you.

I believe economic self-interest is the worst possible ground to make policy from, second only to vanity. 
I believe the greater good IS the common good, that creating policy that protects and benefits those who have the least makes a world that benefits us all. 
I know we have a responsibility as human beings to follow our own ethics in our own lives, and an obligation to protect the right of every other person to do the same.
I believe government, at some level, should be a service provider.  Not a business entity.

Obama can think, the most important thing you taught me to look for.  I think he has a global view, a sense of the movement of history, basic decency and a grasp of economic priority that makes sense.  He can speak, and he does give me hope that there is a better way to run this place.  His ambitions are not the sum of him.  He's a man, not a miracle, but I think there is a lot of evidence that the tone a president sets can change everything.  And his is the tone I want representing America, representing me.

I know you were happy that my year abroad brought me home more fiscally conservative.  It was because I didn't understand the deeper issues of social policy and it didn't stick.  I hope you don't think you wasted all that money educating me, because the more I learn, the lefter I get.  Thought you should know. 

A generous mistress.

You know what I love about knitting? 

You could be forgiven for thinking not much these days, but really - this blogging thing can create a sense that one must knit ALL the time if one is to be other than a slacker, and I just haven't wanted to for a while.  Even I began to doubt my love.

I am not - forgive me - even reading knitting blogs very much.  The thing about blogging your knitting is that it's SLOW.  The narrative arc develops stitch by stitch by stitch - which is what makes knitting so intrinsically tactile and satisfying and wonderful.  But as a subject for the Internet, you are better off with modest progress pictures and a big reveal and truly, I think Ravelry is better for showcasing the work that way for a useful majority of folks and has sapped some of the vitality away from blogs.   I'm a fan of evolution, this is OK. 

Blogging is still ideal for the emotional narrative of what knitting means in a life - for whatever emotional narrative any passion means in a life. 
Hell, I have an emotional narrative about a bag of roving - it may LOOK like it's sitting in the same chair after 3 months, but there are passions beneath that fluffy surface - that has a 4 year backstory and no known ending yet, but it's connected to things, other people, feelings and friendship and love and hope and disappointment and irony that are just too complex and personal for this forum. 
Not even sorry about that.

The blogs I have been reading are perfume blogs and sewing blogs and arts blogs and political blogs and food blogs.  I started reading blogs after 9/11 - discovered them when I was looking for better news sources and then had this whole world opened to me.  Right now the other stuff - perhaps because the creative arcs tend to be more immediate, perhaps because the world is so urgently with us right now - compels me more.  I've even fallen out of the yarn-savant information gathering cycle: I was in a yarn store last month and the only thing I bought was Knitscene (which was great, except for featuring mostly heavier yarns for faster, on-trend knitting. I understand the choice, but have very strong feelings about the need for dk and finer patterns.  But I AM glad to see Knitscene pick up some of the style slack so regrettably dropped by IK.  Which I would cancel my subscription to if I had more than an issue or two left.).  There was some Felted Tweed made up and it made a gorgeous garment and I wasn't even TEMPTED.  (The Purelife Sheep Breeds stuff is conceptually interesting though - like what it says about market maturity that Rowan is developing this.) (I'm not DEAD.)

But I do love knitting.  Today it is cold and raining and I have no sinus headache for the first time in a month and I am wearing my lone pair of self-made socks and the Dream in Color cardigan I made last winter (I think that is the maximum acceptable handknits:body style ratio) and I am warm.   Last night I finally sewed in a snap and hook and eye to hold the thing in place (almost a year, yeah) and found myself making mental notes about what I would change the next time, which is the unmistakable intellectual stirring of a knitter exiting summer hibernation.  I even began a foolishly simple scarf a week or so ago, to ease myself back into the motions - between books.  Because the other thing I have been doing is reading until my eyes fall out.  And I can't - nor do I want - to do both at once. 

But the thing I LOVE about knitting - back to my original point - is that it is infinite.  Never done if you don't want it to be.  It is as infinite as self knowledge, as infinite as learning itself.  And it waits for you until you are ready to move again.

I coped with my political angst by spending the conventions ripping out the poor unsuccessful Truffle Darling sweater from several years ago (Sidebar if you want details.   But the precis is as follows: heavy yarn + tight gauge + fitted and off the shoulder styling = Flattering Armour.  Unwearable.  Particularly if you drop 30 pounds and the fucker is suddenly a shape you are not, as it more or less stood on its own). 

And last night I found a pair of Fetching mitts that have always been too short.  The pretty picot edge on those has a tendency to roll back and since I followed the pattern without thinking about my hands or needs, I stopped them right at the broadest part of my hand, encouraging flare and giving the rollback maximum scope to irritate me.  I made them out of one skein of Karabella SuperYak (I adore this yarn - content, colors, spin, texture, seductive cushiness, density, everything - if it came in a dk or 4-ply weight I would not be responsible for my actions) and had two little skeinlets left over. 
Gorgeous luxury yarn.  Pattern from wrist to fingers.  Yarn left over!  And yet I left them too short? 
So I unpicked the sewn in end last night, found those two little skeins (in two places no less) and tonight I will please my sense of efficiency by knitting them until the yarn runs out and snugging up the pattern to fit my hand. 

Knitting almost always leaves room for you to get it right someday (felting, after all, is forever).  That's what I love.

Data dump.

Can I just say how much August is not amusing me?

Moxie either.

Blogs are slow, paperwork is high.  Business is slow, I'm worried about that. 
I'm breaking out like a thirteen year old.  Every newscaster I've listened to re: the Democratic Convention is annoying the crap out of me with their  making-a-noise-for-the-sake-of-noise-ness.  Not that this is anything new. 
I haven't been to the gym in a month. 
Oh, and my shoes are bothering my feet.  ALL of them. I think my arches are falling, or my feet grew or I just reached some point of (physical only, I assure you) maturity where I can't stand discomfort I used to be unaware of. 

Everyone I've spoken to recently is mildly cross - not depressed, not angry, not upset, not anything serious.  More like a low grade flu.  Or your underpants riding up.  Crabby. 

No, CROTCHETY.

I've been wasting so much time on the unsatisfactory and yet compelling internet (Seriously, would you people blog already?) that I was forced to install a cyber-nanny to police myself, since discipline has slipped badly enough that I cannot be trusted.  At all.  I can't even turn myself in - self employed, you dig?   
It's really fucking sad is what it is.   

I give you....LeechBlock. 

Great name.  I put all my blogs, and facebook and newsgator and wired and youtube and gmail and EVERYTHING on it and lock myself out for most of the work day.
The bones of my desk are emerging.  Shaming. 
Shaming, but FANTASTIC.   

I did read a fabulous article in Wired about this guy who has a plan to eliminate oil dependence and is both connected enough, rich enough and visionary enough that he looks like beginning to make something happen.   In the next year or so you see any stories about Israel (and maybe Hawaii) and electric cars?  READ.
By the time I finished reading I wanted to set my business on fire and throw myself at his feet begging for a job.  Seriously.  Shai Agassi - call me.   English major-type.  Clear prose, good problem solving.   Short on inspiration.  Wants to BELIEVE.

John Kerry just rocked the house.  I wish he'd been that fiery when he was campaigning 4 years ago.

I signed up for FiOS today.  I'm going to save 50 bucks a month combined - maybe more - on my phone/internet/tv.  And the FiOS picture is great and I'll have BBC America which rocks so very hard.  But this means good bye to my beloved TiVo.  And it turns out I am not the only one  - it's a great service but at this point, the integration of everything out weighs the cute little popping noise.   I am strangely sad.

What's up with you?

WIP

So I realized today I am not a Democrat.    You would think I would have figured that out sometime in the last 39 years, but nope, it took me this long.  I was reading something about Senator Obama and his centrist moves now that he has the nomination and I was frothing and muttering and doing Supreme Court math.

And I realized - dude was always a centrist.  Hilary Clinton is a centrist.  Except for Dennis Kucinich, all those cats are mostly way to the right of what I think proper.   
Since I was a kid what I have been is not-Republican.  I looked over there in about 1982 and thought, I'll take the opposite of that.  But there is only so long you can define yourself negatively and the opposite of Republican is a wide open field.  One not occupied by the Democratic National Committee.

I am not a Democrat.

I've been reading a terrific blog recently:  Ta-Nehisi Coates.  The thing I like about him is that when he has gaps in his knowledge that might be influencing his thinking, his expression, he absolutely cops to it.   Which strengthens his writing, because he is thinking about what he's missing, thinking about his own bias, thinking about what there is left to ask.

Jon Carroll is another favorite of mine. His column yesterday was about the fallacy of believing in answers.

I grew up thinking that if you couldn't defend every idea you had to the death, with talking points and bluster, you should keep your mouth shut.  Better to be thought dull than ill informed.  I hate conflict and debate makes me a bit queasy.  So many people think that having their opinion respected means you are not allowed yours, not allowed yours with a big stick and a torch-carrying mob and a lot of righteous outrage.  But maybe the point is that you have your ideas and you talk about them with other people - not to win, but to learn.  I've been practicing having opinions and not feeling like that makes me a target of the mob.  It's going pretty well.

I was going to speculate about what I am, politically - socialist? anarchist? full of despair? progressive? independent? constitutional activist? constitutional purist? left-leaning liberal? crazy hippie pinko? - but I think that defeats the point.  Once I slap a label on it, am I still asking myself what I believe?  Am I still developing ideas? 

Mostly not. 

But I think leaving the definition open is very different from defining myself negatively.  Is there a political party that believes in not having an answer for everything?  That's the one I want.  The player to be named later.

Get your citizenship on.

I had a whole thing planned with links to the most hilarious and apt political ad I've seen in a long while - the Ned Lamont Insanity ad - link here, since I am apparently too stupid to embed the video.  Oh wait, I got it.  That cutting and pasting is tough, let me tell you.

But it is late and I am tired, so I will sum up.

For the past few years here in the United States we've had a political reality in which we problem solve with a cudgel to the head of empirical thought.  Logic and reason out the window.  Non-reality based people at the helm of the world.  If our horse couldn't jump the fence we shot the horse, instead of finding another way around the obstacle.  Etc. Etc.

I've heard so many people say, "well, he's not MY president." I've said it myself.   But he is our president.  This is our reality.

Today is mid-term election day.  And for once, we have a chance to change the balance of power significantly.   So vote early, vote often.  I would strongly prefer that you vote liberal, vote democratic, vote against the Republican (or Republican puppet) incumbent whenever possible .....but one of the biggest problems in American politics is the indifference of the electorate.  So vote your conscience. 

Just vote.

Tuesday Update:  I hate the new electronic voting machines.  Aside from the fact that they are reportedly so simple to hack that I could do it with with power of my mind, they are deeply unsatisfying on an experiential level.   And I do like a good experience.

The button doesn't even make a click to let you know what happened - the board just goes dark and the little window tells you that your vote has been recorded - silently.  Very unfulfilling.  I liked the old booths where the curtain closed when you entered, and you threw a lever at the end and there was a mechanical noise and the curtain open.  The whole thing made an abstract act satisfyingly material, plus you got to feel like the Wizard of Oz for a minute.  You felt like you Voted.  I miss that.

And if you see anything that disturbs you at the polls - don't be silent.  Report your concerns to the Election Incident Reporting System 1-866-OUR-VOTE....and check out the map on their site.  More than 250 irregularities reported in Ohio ALREADY (10 am Eastern as I write).  (Link via Blog Around The Clock).