The Pope!

I know this shouldn't be funny. This is institutionalized abuse of an exceptionally vile and damaging nature. This is a world power run amok with no-one in authority being willing to step up and prosecute criminal charges.

But last night, I had a realization about this whole wretched situation that made me crack up.

The Pope is a supervillain!

He wears a costume. He has a made-up name. He claims to have superpowers, and many believe those claims. He is a former Nazi Youth who spearheaded a conspiracy intended to benefit child molesters, and that is just one of many crimes against humanity committed by his shadowy criminal organization. He plunders the third world to maintain a palace of grotesque luxury. He has a Popemobile! I mean, come on.

No-one I can think of in the history of the world has been so clearly, so unmistakeably, exactly the kind of supervillain that Batman or the Fantastic Four would fight. He's pretty much Doctor Doom, right down to having his own Latveria.

And if you're Catholic, and you find my opinions offensive? Don't think I've singled you out. I pretty much hate all religions, from Hinduism which encourages people to kill their children by bathing them in a river of shit to Islam, whose concept of an afterlife is grotesquely perverse, degrading, and sweatily juvenile, to the Evangelical Christianity that's turning the US into a theocracy run by and for ignorant jingoistic pinheads. I hate 'em all...

... but at least they aren't run by supervillains.

The Hayworth Principle

This one isn't my fault. Erin O'Brien twittered a link to the news story, and... Okay, it's her fault.

Okay. I'm going to make this fast, because I really should get to work. But I need to say this. Folks, we're on a slippery slope. Check this out.

Now, in this case the magnificently dildonic J.D. Hayworth is claiming that gay marriage is the first step on the road to state-sanctioned bestiality. It would be easy enough to refute his argument, as the slippery slope is one of the first things you learn about when you start studying logic and debate. Again, check it out. Slippery slope. When someone starts in with that kind of nonsense, they've removed themselves from the grownup's table.

The thing is, is that this fits in perfectly with my position on the subject of gay marriage, which is that marriage is a religious ceremony and the state has no fucking place involving itself in marriage in any way. Domestic partnerships? Yeah, there's room for legislation there, but marriage is part of folk culture.

If your church is opposed to gay marriage, then don't provide gay marriages and shut the fuck up. You are entitled to your pinheaded, dickish little game of make-believe, you are not entitled to cram it down anyone else's throat through abuse of the political process.

So in this case, I'm in with Hayworth. Because I have my own hate-filled agenda. I'm anti-horse.

(Stay with me. I promise this will all come together in the end.)

Well, I wouldn't say anti-horse. I mean, I'm not prejudiced. I once met a horse I liked, and he'll tell you that I'm not horsephobic.

But while I'm not a horse-hater, you have to admit that they're stupid, heirarchal, vicious, planet-destroying toys of the rich that crap all over the path.

Plus, I hear they're hella tasty. French fries in the fat from horse kidneys? I so want to try that. Horse salami? Oh, yeah.

Right now the laws in America are slanted heavily against the beautiful, sacred practice of hippophagia. And if, as Hayworth says, gay marriage will lead to horse marriage, things can only get worse.

Think of it this way. You marry a Shetland pony, right? And it's beautiful. You love each other. Your relationship is stable, you're part of the community, and everyone who sees you thinks, "That's what I want for myself and my horse-headed children."

So you take your beloved out for your fifth anniversary dinner. Flowers, candle-light, trough of champagne, the works.

And then when the menus come, there it is in the entree section. Fillet of Secretariat. Black Beauty with wild mushrooms. Braised shank of Seabiscuit in a reduced wine sauce. And you lift your head and meet the eyes of your spouse.

Talk about awkward.

If people have to face this kind of thing, they are gonna be passing laws against eating horses right and fucking left.

But what Mr. Hayworth (And in what does he stick his weeny? I mean, why exactly did he go to horses here? Isn't there something suspicious about the way this is coming from someone named Hayworth? We need to look into this dude's behavior.) fails to mention is that the first step down that slippery slope took place when we allowed men and women to marry. Because that led to gay marriage. And that will lead to horse marriage.

( And if you think horse marriage is bad, you don't want to see what happens when we slide a little further down the slope. "Actually, he's not really into horses," said Sweet Chariot. "I'm just a beard.")

So if I'm ever going to have the chance to sit down to a nice platter of cheval au poivre with frites, we need to outlaw marriage.

I'm just thinking of the horses.

Why I Hate The USA: One Nation, Behind Bars

Every time I hear the US referred to as the Land of the Free, I don't know whether to laugh or to go on a cross-country killing spree. The US has more of its population in prison than any other country on the planet. That means we are not the land of the free. It would (literally, actually, no fooling, you idiot) make more sense to refer to ourselves as the land of the incarcerated.

Having more than one out of a hundred US citizens behind bars would be bad enough, but the nature and quality of US prisons makes the situation much worse than it seems on the surface.

Our system is predicated on false premises. The idea is that the threat of punishment discourages wrongdoing.

Haw! Haw! Haw!

This is based on a fairly clear misreading of human nature, especially the kind of impulsive, judgment-poor human nature that's typical of people who do the kind of shit that gets them locked up. And really, let's be honest -- it has its roots in a desire to punish.

The desire to punish is based in malice. It is sadistic -- it allows people to take pleasure in the suffering of others if they can convince themselves that the suffering in question is justified.

Justified cruelty is still cruelty. I say this as someone with a broad streak of vicious bastard in my character. I take great pleasure in the suffering of those I see as deserving of it. This is a vice. It only differs from garden-variety sadism in that it offers the oh-so-delicious spice of self-righteous indignation. (Well, that and I don't get hard behind it, thank goodness.)

This is a flaw. I don't like recognizing it in myself, and I try and keep it curbed. In the US this trait openly celebrated, incorporated into our social and political systems. It devours vast quantities of public wealth and destroys lives and communities.

And it does no good.

While there are people who react to prison by straightening themselves out, that ain't typical. Prison destroys people, then turns them out on the street with a stigma that makes them virtually unemployable. We are being made to pay money to have people broken to the point where they have difficulty existing outside the controlled environment of a prison. Ever hear the term 'institutional man?'

And I refer to men here, because the vast majority of prisoners in the US are men. And this is why in the US, men are statistically more likely to be raped than women.

I reached a conclusion a while ago that left me feeling extremely uncomfortable. I went to bounce it off a friend of mine. She's a former Marine, and a former cop, among other things. She's had enough contact with the prison system for me to feel as though she'd be able to set me straight on the subject.

So I asked her, "Is it an exaggeration to call most prisons in the US rape camps?"

She didn't have to think about it. She wasn't surprised by the notion -- didn't even blink.

"No, that's what they are."

It really, really bugs me when people gloat over the idea of someone going to prison and getting raped. And this isn't a right wing/left wing thing. I've known plenty of pinkoes who have relished the idea of certain individuals being forcibly sexually violated.

That's right, folks. The USA keeps better than one percent of its population in rape camps, and we think it's funny.

Fuck you, USA.

Of course, the rape camps are, as they always are, stocked on a basis of ethnicity. The number of black men in prison is an act of apartheid. And when you conjugate that with the notion of cheap prison labor, it doesn't seem a million miles away from being a covert return to slavery.

And never forget -- we pay for this. The prison system sucks a hell of a lot of money out of the public commonwealth and delivers nothing in return but broken humans. If I'm gonna pay for something like this, I'd at least like to see productive citizens at the end of the process.

Most significantly, the main reason people are in prison is because of the illegality of many popular mind-altering drugs. Our rum-guzzling, pot-growing founding fathers would be massively shocked by this one. John Stuart Mills would shit pills.

America has produced a drug culture of remarkable influence and potency. Look back on the old days of patent medicines -- our forefathers and -mothers were all messed up on hardcore drugs. You used to be able to buy cocaine and heroin at the fucking drugstore.

Republicans make a big noise about Democratic social engineering, but it's hard to see a more egregious example of social engineering than incarcerating more of our population than any Marxist government because you want to control what kind of a buzz people get.

To legislate what people can and cannot put into their own bodies is a fundamental violation of liberty. Period.

Most people in prison are there because of drug offenses. Why are we spending money to keep them from living productive lives, to render them incapable of leading productive lives?

Because a lot of folks love, love, love to see bad guys punished. And that leads them to believe against all evidence that punishment discourages behavior.

So it's easy enough to bitch about the situation. Here are a few thoughts on how a better system could be put into place.

First off, totally decriminalize all drug use. Let anyone use any drug they want.

There are people who take this stance who say that there wouldn't be any significant fallout from doing this. They are full of shit. May I suggest a brief perusal of Hogarth's Beer Alley and Gin Lane? If you lived in a lower-class neighborhood during the heyday of crack, Gin Lane should look pretty fucking familiar to you. This is what happens when unfamiliar hard drugs hit a community for the first time. And make no mistake, hard liquor is a hard drug.

But I feel very strongly that the social cost of living in a rape-camp culture is far more damaging to the USA, socially, economically, and morally. And over time, the culture learns to absorb the effects of the availability of hard drugs -- look at the role gin currently plays in British culture.

If you drink alcohol, coffee, or smoke tobacco -- hell, if you eat fast food and drink soda (take a look at the research on their effects on brain chemistry -- it ain't hyperbole), you are a serious drug user. Get over it and stop pointing fingers at people just because their dangerous mind-altering chemicals aren't your preference.

Next, get rid of incarceration as a punishment. Only incarcerate those who have demonstrated an inability to function in society without harming others, and make their incarceration dignified and humane -- one that reflects the highest values of our culture rather than the most abject.

Instead, make the fuckers work for a living, and make them pay for what they've done in dollars. After they've paid off their victims and the court costs, then leave 'em alone. Make it so that employers know that someone who's been through the mill of the legal system is someone who's probably a good employee. Education and halfway houses. This would be cheaper than prisons, and by returning people to society as contributors and taxpayers rather than fundsuckers, we earn interest. Every citizen should be regarded as an investment. (That's socialism, right there. And that's a subject for another essay.)

And somewhere out there I can hear the bleating. "But that means that people would commit crimes so they could get jobs!" Make similar educational programs available to everyone. Again, invest in a healthy culture. "But why should we treat criminals --" Stop right there and ask yourself the question, "Why am I so eager to punish people?"

When I asked myself that question, the answer was simple. "Because I'm kind of an asshole." Breaking a law doesn't make someone an asshole. Hurting others out of foolishness and unbridled self-interest makes someone an asshole.

And when I think of our prison system, I can't help but think that we're a nation of assholes. Land of the free, my ass.

Why I Hate The USA: Dishonerable Opponents

So I was looking at the statistics for the blog and I noticed that someone from the Democratic National Committee had taken a peek at the last post. (I assume they were after dog brain porn.) I wasn't sure if I was going to do any more of these screeds, thought that if I did I'd probably do something on the prison system or education.

But now that there's a chance someone involved in politics might see them? Boy howdy.

Hey, Republican National Committee! Come on down and have a look-see for yourself!

I'm going to indulge in a little fantasy here. I'm going to pretend that I can actually address the two major political parties.

Okay, you two. Cut it out. You are fucking civil servants. Start fucking serving the people.

Republicans? Remember when you were Lincoln's party? Democrats! Remember when you were devoted to social welfare?

What the fuck happened to you two?

I think a two party system is madness. You can't divide every issue into two sides. You can't have a party that deals with all issues in a cohesive fashion. That's not how reality works. Each issue needs to be regarded both in isolation and in conjunction with all other issues.

That said, if one party was genuinely interested in promoting social progress through the use of legislation and the other was genuinely interested in economic conservatism and minimizing government's place in the culture?

That would not be a terrible thing. I could live with that. And wouldn't it be swell if you campaigned on the basis of things like, oh, I don't know. Maybe issues? Voting records?

But those concepts of the Democratic and Republican party have fallen by the wayside, and what we've got are the chickenshit kleptocrats and the loud-mouthed trigger-happy 'I'm all fucked up on Jesus' kleptocrats.

Democrats, you need to get your ovaries and testicles in functioning fucking condition. From the Reagan years on you have let the Republicans fuck this country like a prison bitch. Right now America is dribbling shit from a ruptured anus because you did not sac up and do what's right. They lied and they lied and then they lied some more and all of their lies were easily refuted with indisputable evidence and you let them fucking get away with it because you were scared of losing the dumbshit vote.

Or, rather, the sweet, sweet flow of cash from the corporate teat washed your mouth clean of the taste of Republican jizz. Rather than presenting a unified front opposing what was clearly wrong, you chose political expediency and personal gain and we are all paying the price for your weakness and greed.

(I'll go into this later, but if you think prison rape is funny, or that anyone deserves to be raped? You are a fucking degraded subhuman. Go jump into moving traffic, now.)

And Republicans. I remember with fondness the Reagan years, back when I'd hear asinine granola-grubbing left wing types refer to Republicans as Nazis and I would give them shit about it.

That's right. I may not have given you any votes, but I defended your right to exist.

But between prison camps, illegal wars, openly advocating torture, mass wiretapping, plundering of public funds for private interests, the sick collusion of corporatism and theocracy metastasizing in the political body --

You aren't as bad as the Nazis were. But you are now legitimately comparable to the Nazis. And if given full reign? I think you'd be every bit as bad and maybe worse.

And the way you lie! I mean, you'd think with all the practice you've had you'd be good at it. But no. The way you've embraced the big lie principle is fucking staggering. You just say whatever you think is going to get you your way no matter what you said on camera the day before, no matter what the facts are. Black is white, red is blue, that's not dogshit, it's chocolate.

And the USA eats it right up. Just swallows it down.

Any ordinary citizen who regards him- or herself as a Democrat or a Republican is a sucker. Two sides of one coin. To support one or the other is to support a bankrupt system.

I used to automatically vote for whatever third party seemed most likely to have a chance. Even Libertarians!

(There are two kinds of Libertarians. The naive kind who believe that the magical Free Market fairy will wave her wand and make everything better, and the vicious kind who really like the idea of the vulnerable starving in the gutter.)

Bush put an end to that. His administration made it plain that the Republicans as they currently stand are genuinely evil and will consistently act against the best interests of the nation and the world as a whole in order to indulge their greed and bloodthirst. I hate the Democrats; the Republicans are unquestionably worse, even if their strength and determination makes them more attractive.

That's right, Republicans. You've driven me to vote Democrat. You, of all people, should know how degraded a condition that is.

Sometimes I wish I believed in God. Because then I could believe in Hell. Because if I believed in Hell?

I would know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are going there.

Why I Hate The USA: The Early Years

I've decided to make this the default image for posts where I spend a lot of time complaining. Consider yourself warned.

Okay, let's get this out of the way. The main reason I hate America is because I am a hateful person. I am filled with hate and it has to go somewhere. I'd hate any country that I lived in and frankly, it wouldn't take much effort to come up with a fairly convincing list of grievances against any nation on the planet.

I am a US citizen. My family's been here from the start of colonization, and the odds are good I've got Native American blood. This is where I'm from. Don't assume that my hatred of the US means that I'm in favor of anything else. You may as well think I'm a duck as think I'm a Marxist.

That said, there's something... special about the US. Special in the short-bus sense of the word.

Here's the bit of news that set me off a few minutes ago. We have members of the Supreme Court speaking out in support of the execution of the innocent.

Let's be serious -- if Scalia was a tapeworm-riddled hunk of dogshit, all the other tapeworm-ridden hunks of dogshit would justifiably regard him with moral loathing. Fuck you, Scalia. The Constitution does not specifically forbid cracking a dog's skull open with a hatchet and fucking the cleft in its brain. That doesn't mean you have any grounds for defending the act.

Oh, yeah -- the Holy Sacred Glowing Constitution. There are three kinds of people who venerate the Constitution. People who are members of the privileged classes. People who identify with and support the privileged classes...

... and people who haven't read the fucking thing. If you actually sit down and read the Federalist Papers and the Constitution (the original Constitution, pre-Bill of Rights), it's pretty clear that the purpose behind the so-called Revolution (more on that real soon) was to establish a social structure similar to that of England, with the noble class deriving authority from wealth rather than heritage.

(Of course, wealth is inherited, which is how we get our USAnian dynasties.)

The type of democratic egalitarianism we are taught to think of as American (and I use the term American ironically, with full knowledge of the fact that there are other fucking nations in the fucking Americas) is in no way directly supported by the Constitution.

Rather, it is a set of principles primarily intended to keep the rich rich and to make it easy for them to get richer. The Bill of Rights definitely puts a different complexion on things, but if you look at the history, there was a lot of resistance to the very notion of those rights. The Constitution can be called on to support worthy causes but in order to bring it to bear you have to beat it like a government mule.

If you disagree with me, then give me your arguments based on the texts in question. Not on opinion or emotion or appeals to patriotism. If it ain't on the page, then fuck your outrage.

And as for the American Revolution. As I mentioned above, America is not the name of our nation. We're the United States of America. And as for Revolution, go look the fucking word up in the dictionary. A revolution changes the central government. The American Revolution was actually the US Rebellion. Which would be a great name for an aircraft carrier, don't you think?

Look, the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution are two of the most gloriously inspirational passages of prose the world has ever seen. But they don't really tell us anything about the actual rebellion in question. I mean, what would have happened if the rebellion hadn't occurred? Aw, look at poor Canada, Australia, New Zealand, groaning under the brutal yoke of British imperialism -- all with better health and educational options for the average citizen than the US offers. Fuck the American Revolution.

There was never more than 1/3 popular support for the war. It resulted in drastically increased taxes for the citizens. And most telling of all, within the first few years after the rebellion there were two populist revolts against the federal government, Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

King Washington put one down through use of a secret society, the Brotherhood of Cincinnatus. (Doesn't that sound like a crazed conspiracy theory? Again, look it up or shut up.)

In response to the other, he personally led an army as big as the one he fielded against the British in order to extract usurious taxes from a bunch of subsistence farmers. The fact that Washington owned a lot of land in the area that appreciated in value after he put down the Whiskey Rebellion might have had something to do with the enthusiasm of his response...

Oh, my golly gosh. This post is already running long and I haven't even gotten past Washington's administration. I'll let it go for now, but lemme say this.

It may seem as if I've got a bug up my butt about the origins of my country. Well, lemme tell you this.

That ain't nothin'. I'm really pissed about the current state of the nation.

In Which In Which I Try To Stop Worrying And Learn To Love The President

Here's the next stage. I've made large area selections for the sky, ground, and water and have added two layers of color using two different blending modes.

Half the fun of this project is splashing around and making the blots. When I found out it was going to be raining yesterday I set some paper out -- museum board, heavy watercolor paper, and some coated stock something like a glossy plate bristol board -- and squirted gouts of black and white tempera on them. Then the rain came and washed the paint randomly all over the place.

The results are pretty darned cool. The museum board took an overall varied grayish tone, there are good blot patterns on the watercolor paper, and the coated stock just needed a good squirt of ink to turn into something interesting. I'm just worried about what state they'll be in by the time they're dry enough to move inside...

It's interesting. My reaction to Obama's election is considerably different from the people around me and it's making me realize just how misanthropic and cynical I actually am. I've always regarded these characteristics as essentially being a form of realism -- but now I am, to an extent, questioning that.

For all the talk of the significance of race in this election -- and I do not mean to diminish this -- I find myself more fascinated by two different prejudices. One is American anti-intellectualism. For the first time in a long, long time the smartest candidate won. Obama didn't pull a Bush-style shuck-and-jive where an Ivy-league son of inherited wealth tries to act like a goddamn yard man. Instead, he made a virtue out of his education and intellect. And it worked.

The other is my own prejudice against authority figures. I have to confess that when watching Obama speak, there is something in me that draws back and prepares for a fight. To see anyone -- anyone -- stand up in front of a cheering crowd and feel proud and comfortable in that situation punches a button in me.

I voted for Obama.

Let me clarify that. This is the first presidential election where I've had the opportunity to actually cast a vote in favor of someone I wanted to see in the White House. Nixon was my introduction to the concept of government and nation. Vietnam, Watergate -- when I think of government, these are the kinds of things that come to mind.

Ever since I started voting, I've always voted against a candidate. It's always a situation where I've said, "Well, Dracula does suck the blood of virgins but at least he's got a better foreign policy than the Wolfman does."

But this time around when I looked at Obama's history and stated policies I found myself nodding in agreement. The way he ran his campaign was exemplary in the sense that it should serve as an example for the future of American politics.

But to see him in front of a crowd, clearly proud of his achievements and reveling in the historical moment that he created...

... something in me said, "Uh-huh. Looks like we got us a president here." And I just don't trust presidents. My whole life I've believed that the main problem facing mankind as a species is that we are hierarchical in nature and the people drawn toward positions at the top of the hierarchy tend to be scum.

The last eight years have done nothing to affect that opinion.

But perhaps I need to step back from that. Perhaps I should consider the possibility that there are leaders who are not essentially predatory or parasitic.

I have decided to tentatively regard Obama's decisions to associate himself with people like Rick Warren as a good thing. While I don't approve of Mr. Warren, his inclusion in the inauguration gave a broad swath of the American populace a reason to feel that they were not being shut out. That's a good thing. Were Mr. Warren to be put in a position to decide social policy I'd feel differently about it but to allow him to recite a little mumbo-jumbo does no serious harm.

I don't know, though. I may or may not be able to conquer my detestation of authority and power. Maybe I shouldn't worry about it. Somebody's got to hate and it may as well be me. I'm good at it.

But maybe I should allow myself to have a little hope.

And just as an aside, I've heard two songs in the past few days that really struck me as appropriate for the way I've been feeling about this -- Pomps and Pride by Toots and the Maytalls, and Ambiguity Song by Camper van Beethoven...

All across the nation people are getting together
From many ideas they form a single goal
Some people gonna benefit and others gotta sacrifice
but everything seems to be up in the air at this time

A Short Imaginary Conversation With A Former President (Because Someone Had To Do It)

Sometimes a stained image of a mutilated dead bug
just feels right.

(phone rings)

The Oaf: President Bush, I was just wondering about your exit strategy from Afganistan.

The Shrub: It's not my problem, I'm not the president anymore. Good-bye. (hangs up.)

(phone rings)

The Oaf: And I was wondering about the way you sold off our national food stores. What with the economy, aren't we going to wish we still had those?

The Shrub: It's not my problem, I'm not the president anymore. Good-bye. (hangs up.)

(phone rings)

The Oaf: Listen, dude, as a citizen I thought it was the ultimate in international embarrassment when your old man puked on the Japanese Prime Minister but you've put him in the shade. Go ahead and rape the Constitution and the economy and all that but for pete's sake, as our nation's representative could you just stop acting like a doofus when there are grownups in the room?


The Shrub: Will you cut it out? I'm not the president. I'm not the president! I'M NOT THE PRESIDENT! Why do you keep making me tell you I'm not the president?

The Oaf: Sorry, man. I just like the way it sounds.

(rim shot and fade)

Oh Brother.

You aren't helping, Govenor.

This was the headline on a local student newspaper I picked up yesterday. I've been turning some ideas for a perfect society over in my head and this gave me a good one, simple yet effective.

Any official acting against education gets their title misspelled. Until his attitude changes he's Govenor Schwarzenegger to me.

Predictably...

Looking down at my ballot I almost lost it for a second -- I really, really wanted to vote for Cynthia McKinney on the G. Harrold Carswell principal -- there are a lot of crazy people in the US and don't they deserve representation?

But I voted the Obama/Biden ticket. The only frivolous vote I cast was for a local fellow named Igor Tregub. A little post-ballot research revealed a worthy candidate, thank goodness.

But he got my vote because, well, you know.

Frankenstein.

Why I Oppose Proposition Eight

These were done for the missus's business card back when she was the one trying to make it as an artist. They're based on two of her porcelain sculptures.

Last night I saw that Rory Harper of Eat Our Brains had posted a link to this video of San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders. I immediately sent Mayor Sanders an email of support and I'm posting this essay in order to affirm my solidarity with his position.

If I had my way there would be no laws at all regarding marriage. It is usually a religious ceremony and as such the principle of separation of church and state seems to cover the matter...

But since there is special legal treatment of married couples, it's only right to make legal marriage available to anyone. Here's an essay I wrote a couple of years back that should make my feelings clear.

Book People was losing money, and it didn’t look like that was going to change any time soon. That was the basis for my position. Book People was a book distributing company that had an unusual structure. It was an employee-owned corporation, which was different than a co-op. The employees were also stockholders, so if the company turned a profit, we all got dividends. Rather than having corporate decisions made by the company as a whole, we elected a board of directors.

Book People had originally acted as a liaison between the small press and independent booksellers. During its glory days, the salaries that people were paid were insignificant next to the yearly dividends. I had heard stories of people taking their dividend checks and buying cars, cash, or making the down payment on a house. Those days ended shortly before I started working there.

The book industry was changing. The mom and pop booksellers had to compete with big chain bookstores, and they weren’t doing well. As a result, we were doing a lot more business with businesses like Borders and Barnes & Noble. At first this was heralded as Our Next Big Break, but it soon became obvious that things didn’t work like that. We were acting as an interface between companies that were in a position to dictate terms to us, and now we our profits were whatever was left over after the big boys took their bite. I hadn’t seen a dividend in the four years I’d been working there, and there had been a freeze on raises for the last year.

So when the question of whether or not to extend health insurance benefits to unmarried partners of employees was brought up, the answer seemed pretty clear-cut to me. We weren’t making money, and all of a sudden a very large expense is being proposed, an expense that has nothing to do with the business itself. It was just more money being spent. It just didn’t make sense.

I thought that was the only factor affecting my opinion on the situation. That wasn’t true; I hadn’t examined myself and the question thoroughly enough to really understand it.
Part of my position was due to the fact that I hadn’t really made use of our insurance program. We had full dental and full optical, and I never made use of either. At that time, my only major health crises had been mental, so I didn’t know how important it was to be able to deal with a health issue without having financial issues come into play. It was all abstract to me, except for the drain on the company’s cash.

I wasn’t as bad as some people were. At least my concern was for the company’s well being. I knew a few people whose position was based on selfishness and resentment.
“I don’t wear glasses,” Gary the Receiver said. “Why should I have to pay for your glasses? Hell, I don’t have kids. Ron’s kid broke his arm, and I had to help pay for the cast. Why doesn’t he have to take responsibility for his decision to have the kid? What makes it my problem?” He stamped the packing slip for the shipment he was processing and counted the boxes, pointing with his finger and moving his lips, then wrote down the number on the slip.

“You’re looking at it wrong,” I said. “You aren’t paying for a pair of glasses, or a kid getting a cast put on his arm. What you’re paying for is a quality of life. I mean, if you’ve got to see benefits from your perspective, you want people driving forklifts with glasses they’ve been wearing for five years because they don’t want to pay for new ones? You want to have to listen to Ron complaining if in addition to worrying about his kid he’s also blown a few thousand dollars on doctor’s bills? And what if something happens to you? You want us to walk around talking about how much you cost?”

“Whatever,” Gary said. (Of course, he got his. Kidney damage brought on by overconsumption of liquor store vitamin pills. Two weeks in the hospital. And I got to hear Dave from Returns asking why we were paying money because Gary was a drunk and an idiot…)

“What I’m saying is, you aren’t paying for any specific item. You’re paying it so that you can live in a society where you and everybody around you is taken care of. Basic compassion, dude.”

“Whatever,” Gary said.

Looking back on it, I don’t really understand how I could have failed to apply that argument to the issue of partner support. For that matter, if I was so concerned about expenses, why wasn’t I trying to have health benefits cut? There was an inconsistency in my position.

But the last big influence on my position was ignorance. I didn’t understand what the “unmarried partners” thing meant. There was part of the situation that I didn’t see at all. And I still feel guilty, because I should have seen it.

Book People culture was to a considerable degree lunchcentric. It had been decided a long time ago that it made more sense to hire a cook and have lunches prepared every day than it was to have people going out for lunch, skipping meals, having to spend time at home making lunch – this was our lunch money, and this was how we chose to spend it. There were a lot of divisions inside the company; the offices vs. the warehouse, returns vs. the order department, and so on and so on. The lunchroom was a place where those barriers broke down. There were the people you worked with, and there were the people you ate with.

I have to wonder why Wendy decided to sit at my table. I call it “my table” because, well, I’m a bit of a loudmouth and a semi-high dominance individual, and if you ate lunch with me, the conversation was going to tend towards the weird and the loud. In fact, we were described by others as ‘the loud table.’ Not everyone is going to appreciate a mealtime discussion of the reproductive habits of the Guinea Worm, or why the Schwarzenegger Conan bore no resemblance to the real thing as written by Robert E. Howard and no one else.

Wendy was a soft-spoken woman, one of those people whose gentleness forms an element of charm. If you were really sick, you’d feel better if she was in the room. Usually, I feel a little uncomfortable around those types. I have to hold back, soften myself. I’m always afraid that something grossly offensive is going to slip out of me.

Wendy seemed perfectly comfortable with the tone of conversation we had going, and when her devotion to decency was brought into the mix, it didn’t dampen things. She was able to check my tendency to hypothetically slaughter vast numbers of people without being a drag. It was nice to have her with us. These days, niceness is seriously underrated. It’s associated with wimposity. I disagree. In this world, being nice takes strength. I may not be nice myself, but I am militantly pro-nice.

Wendy was a mother, and was raising her daughter along with the two children of her unmarried domestic partner. Her unmarried domestic partner was a woman, and this was where I had failed to understand the hidden meaning behind the phrase ‘unmarried domestic partner’.

The insurance question was going to be decided by the Board of Directors, but before that happened, there was to be a company wide meeting so that everybody could have a chance to make their opinion known. Towards the end of the meeting, I raised my hand and made my point. We’re in debt, this will cost money, end of argument.

And then Wendy spoke. “There are people in this room who are in gay or lesbian relationships,” she said. “We aren’t allowed to be married in the eyes of the state. Our relationships,” and here I could here her voice crack, the way it does when your throat aches from tears that you’re holding back, “our love, isn’t recognized. It’s as though it doesn’t exist.

“Book People prides itself on being a community that accepts people as people, that treats all people equally. If Charise and I could get married, we would, and Book People would give Charise coverage. By denying the partners of gay employees coverage, Book People is supporting the way the state treats us. It’s a way of saying that we don’t matter.

“I just don’t think that’s right.” And then she sat down.
I raised my hand. “I withdraw my opinion. I was wrong. I agree with Wendy.”

After the meeting, I went to apologize to Wendy. “I feel like a complete ass,” I said. “I still think that we can’t afford it, but if Book People can’t afford to do what’s right, then maybe we should go under.”

Wendy seemed angry. I couldn’t tell if she was mad at me, or at the whole situation. “Thank you for saying sorry,” she said. “It’s just so… I thought that Book People was supposed to be a place for people who were more,” and she waved her hands. “You know. Conscious of things.”

It wasn’t the logic of what Wendy said that changed my opinion. I agree with the logic, and I’d like to think that it would have been enough to make me change my mind. But it was the sound of her voice that got to me, the way it made me feel that this wasn’t a matter of dollars and cents. It made me think about all of the people who felt that kind of pain, and it made it intolerable for me to think of myself as someone who would support the conditions that led to that pain. The logic worked for me; Wendy’s argument made sense. But in the end I was swayed because I felt that her love mattered.

I Can't Possibly Be The Only One Thinking This...

Okay. With luck -- or rather, draftsmanship -- on my side I'll be posting a sketch of Anomalocaris canadensis later today. But just in case, here's a little political raving to keep things from slowing down too badly. Please feel free to ignore this; and remember, these are the opinions of a raving nutbar.

Right now the economy is a central issue in all our lives. Exactly why is America's economy in the shitter? We're conducting a war -- to conduct a war and ruin an economy at the same time seems like some sort of magic trick.

I'm no economist, I'm woefully ignorant of politics. But it seems to me that when you run a war you have to fucking well run a war. That means paying for the war, not just sending people off to battle.

It means victory gardens, scrap metal drives, war bonds. It means that the civilian population has to throw its support behind the military.

The current administration paid for the Iraq war (or, currently, occupation) with credit cards.

Your credit cards.

To conduct a war and cut taxes at the same time means that the war has to be paid for by going into debt. This is profoundly foolish.

Worse than that much of the money funneled into both the war and anti-terrorism efforts turned out to be straight-up pork. "No-bid contracts?" Wiretapping? Give me a break -- these were excuses to move money from public to private pockets. And given the administration's connections with companies like Halliburton it is difficult not to read this as a case of a bunch of war criminals plundering one nation while bombing another.

If this government had actually conducted the war on a fiscally responsible basis they would have needed cooperation from the nation as a whole. Which means they would have had to justify the whole shebang. Which they could not do.

So they ran the country into debt while a handful of private interests almost choked themselves to death on the flood of dollars cascaded down their throats -- and that money had to come from somewhere.

Whoever comes into office next is going to be reaping the harvest of the last eight years -- or rather, the accumulated harvest of every administration from Reagan on. That's when the deregulazation of the financial industry began and things have been going downhill ever since.

Of course the American people are also responsible for this. By allowing ourselves to be controlled by fear, by listening to the Big Lie over and over again, by simply being selfish and short-sighted we have helped to bring this situation to pass. Shame on us.

Interesting that the bill is coming due just as Bush is on his way out of the White House. I really, really hope there is some legal recourse we can take to bring him, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of that bloody-snouted herd of anthropophagous swine to some kind of justice.

But I doubt it.

Sarah Palin is a Funny, Funny Woman.

I just saw some of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric and boy! Does she have a great sense of humor or what? The sustained put-on that she's doing makes Stephen Colbert and Sasha Baron Cohen look sick. I thought Bush was good but Palin has thrown the whole curve off and now there's a new comedy gold standard.

It made me think of that great self-deprecating joke she had. I hope I remember it right -- I'm terrible with these things.

(Deep breath.) Okay, here we go.

Q: What's the difference between a pit bull and a soccer mom?

A: America is ready for a pit bull in the White House!