06.27.08
Posted in People, Personal, Politics at 9:47 am by qkslvrwolf
You would think, with 27 amendments, 7 sections + a preamble, and god knows how many clauses, that conservatives could find another part of the constitution that they give a shit about besides the 2nd amendment.
In a conversation I had yesterday, I pointed out to the guys in my office that the supreme court struck down DC’s gun law, that the argument that they made was reasonable, even if I don’t agree with it, and look! lots of liberals are saying the same thing…ergo trying to convince them that they won the whole gun battle, we don’t much care anymore (we have bigger fish to fry), so can they please stop not voting for democrats solely because “they wanna take our guns.”
Seriously, What. The. Fuck.
This turned into a major argument, where I had to repeat over and over again that I had no interest in gun control laws because they don’t work, but that I personally believe that the 2nd amendment only protects the right to form (and arm) well-regulated militias. But I’m not interested in taking away guns, because the cats out of the bag.
And all they can hear is “you want to take our guns! most important supreme court decision ever! you can’t pick and choose from the constitution!”
You can’t pick and choose from the constitution.
From the same people who are ok with getting rid of habeas corpus. From the same people who are ok with dropping with protections from unreasonable search and seizure. From the same folks who don’t understand that the judiciary’s constitutional job is to block the will of the people, expressed through the legislature, and prevent the majority from trampling on the constitution. From the same people who believe in the “unitary executive”. From the same folks who think that all of a sudden, the president has the right to make the budget and to make treaties and declare war.
These same people are telling me that I can’t pick and choose from the constitution because I think their argument that the constitution protects their individual right to bear arms is, while valid, not correct, that I, not they, cannot pick and choose from the constitution.
I am so mad I could spit.
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06.16.07
Posted in People, Personal at 2:51 pm by qkslvrwolf
I have what appears to be a serious, debilitating mental block. A block that I appear to need to break to have any chance of finding a significant other, but one that is currently so ingrained that I don’t even want to break it.
The block is that I think traditional american dating patterns, typical western dating patterns, are a retarded way to meet and get to know people, especially if you’d like to find someone to spend the rest of your life with.
I mean, from what I can tell*, this is how dating works:
Person A is at some public venue, and sees a person that appears to be attractive or at least interesting to them, based almost entirely on visual cues. Person A approaches person B and begins a conversation with zero value.
A: “Hi, I’m A”
B: “Hi.”
A: “So, having fun?”
B: “Oh, yeah, I’m having a great time!”
A: “What’s your name?”
B: “Oh! I’m B”
A: “So’d'ja meet some friends here?”
B: “Yeah, we come down here after work a lot. It’s a good place. You?”
A: “I’ve never been here before, but I like the it. The DJ is really good.”
…
Gag me. I have watched/listened to/and once or twice even participated in one of the introductory conversation many times, and with rare exception they make me LESS interested in 1) talking to the specific person and 2) talking to any individual ever again.
There are exceptions, I won’t deny it. Some of the folks up at castletown and I have had conversation that are worthwhile.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes these conversations can be fun. Occasionally you’ll find something (unmemorable) to talk about and laugh about together. But I cannot for the life of me recall what I’ve talked about on those meaningless but fun conversations, and that adds to the meaninglessness of the whole thing.
Moving on.
So, armed with at least a basic attraction to the other person’s physical presence (by which I mean to include things about they way in which they hold themselves), and, I suppose, a lack of annoyance inducing by their speech patterns, person A now asks for a phone number.
Anyway, I’m getting out of my depth here, but it seems to me that now you’re in interview mode. Rather than showing the other person who you really are, you now go into a CYA mode of trying to show your better side while still being “fun”. “Fun” is of course the most important thing for you to be, although you’re left to figure out what the other person thinks of as “fun” from your limited store of data, and vice versa. Whatever you do, however, do NOT be yourself. For instance, if I may quote the article “Impressively Proper” from this month’s St Louis’ Sauce Magazine, “‘What you decide to order could be a big deal. You want to stick with things that aren’t overly complicated”, yada yada, tons of rules about how you shouldn’t act normally at first.
Basically, my view of dating is that you put off actually getting to know the person for as long as possible, get some physical and mental play out of it, and basically avoid the real parts of the relationship to get you started. And that’s backwards to me.
It’s been a well known fact among those who know me well that I prefer to date friends, recommend dating friends, because to me, friendship is absolutely key to having a successful relationship. And all the best couples I know reinforce that concept. Mom and Dad. Joe and Theresa. Flip and Shelly. Andy and Asha. Nathan and Laura. They’re all FRIENDS. And most of them were friends before they were lovers.**
So for me, in a perfect world, the dating would start after you’ve already gotten to know a person, had some good conversations about meaningful stuff with them, gotten mentally close to them a bit. Then you can start exploring the romance. Anything else seems backwards and destined to be doomed to failure. And I should note that meaningful stuff doesn’t have to be weighty topics. It can be long drawn out discussions of hobbies or stores, but the interesting part is how it relates to who they are. You don’t get them on any real level in those safe, fake conversations with people you’re “dating”, because that might display something that isn’t palatable to the ‘everyperson’ out there. Dating is like big-box retail shopping. You’re only allowed to display the stuff that is going to have a chance of being bought by every single person that walks into the shop. Friendship is more like the long-tail method.
Anyway, so as far as I can tell, everyone I know around here subscribes very much to the “dating” method of doing things, and on top of that, they also do the ‘once I know you well enough to call you a friend, you are off limits to romantic consideration’. So where does that leave me? Well and truly isolated.
Of course, there hasn’t been a lot of real depth to most of the friendships I’ve cultivated around here, either. There are maybe two, three people that I’ve really gotten to know on any kind of level, but they both have many other pulls on their time, so I don’t get to see them nearly often enough to fill my needs.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that I have to work to get any physical contact (i.e., hugs and cuddling) around here. Don’t even get me started.
In conclusion: if I am going to continue to live far removed (in space and time) from the friends and family that I really know, and if I want to have any shot of finding someone locally to fill my closeness needs, then it looks like I’m going to have to break my mental block and do things ass-backwards. Blah.
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*I have been on, to my recollection, one traditional “date” in my life. It was the summer I worked Goucher’s reunion, with one of the other reunion workers. I would’ve been…between sophomore and junior year, she had just graduated. I had a good time, but I don’t remember what happened afterwards. I don’t think I ever called the girl afterwards, because I didn’t know where to go from there.
** Despite hating this word in this usage because it cannot help but sound trite, I can’t think of a more accurate, single word to use here.
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08.20.06
Posted in Friends, House, People at 6:45 pm by qkslvrwolf
Today’s project has been cleaning the house. And I’m not done yet, but a friend of mine, henceforth to be known as Frank Sparrow, or FS, has put up a new blog right before she heads off to South Korea to do some ESL teaching. Crazy people. That’s two crazy people I’ve known.
Now, part of today’s cleaning has been finally getting rid of all my AC memorabilia. I’ve thought about taking it down before (and yes, I know everyone has recommended that I take it down a loooooong time ago), but it just never…I guess I wasn’t quite ready. I should’ve been. Lord knows that the way I’ve been treated I should’ve been happy to take the stuff down and put it away. But I haven’t been. Still, the events of the past couple of weeks have helped me to move on. Thanks Mother (Ball) and FS. And, I suppose, thanks to Duke, for sucking up to AC and framing me for something I didn’t do on AC’s blog. It’s helped bring me to the “moving on” point. It’s time.
Not saying I’ve moved on…but I’m definitely moving on. :-)
Now, in this cleaning, I’ve not only been throwing out little green stickies that say “I love you” and whatnot (which, you know, the end of a relationship always sucks, especially when it ends with the other person refusing to acknowledge your existence for months, because you end up wondering “Was it real, or was she fooling me and/or herself”. Its a very irritating feeling.), but I’ve also (continuation of previous sentence long ago) done all the cleaning things that I very rarely do…like dusting and vacuuming. (sp?).
On the note of the AC removal, this is a call for pictures. Most of the pictures around the house were of AC or AC and me, and I have all these frames that are now empty and needing pictures. So if anyone wants to send me pictures in the smail…that’d be great, mmmmk?
And last, but not least, a couple of pictures from Andy and Asha’s wedding. (Andy and Asha need a BLOODY BLOG, DAMMIT!).
One final note…you can get all the pictures I took here. Email or call me for a password.
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04.14.06
Posted in LINKSPAM, People, Politics, web at 6:44 pm by qkslvrwolf
Anyway, I ran across this guy Damien on a digg.
Someone had posted his opinion of Americans and their creationistic bent on digg, and, somewhat surprisingly for a digg site, he was getting hammered with commenters.
During this time of stress and conflict, Damien kept his head and argued eloquently and efficiently.
I don’t know how I ended up back at the site, but I’ve left some comments here if you wanna search for ‘em, plus Damien’s comments are always sweet. He just has no tolerance for stupidity. He also is some kind of kindred spirit, as he’s got lots of good stuff going on (firefox, contempt for idiots, sarcasm, a love of john stewart and steven colbert, etc).
Anyway, he doesn’t appear to post much more often than I do, but its always good.
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11.20.05
Posted in Entertainment, General, People at 2:07 pm by qkslvrwolf
So, first things first. Harry Potter. The Goblet of Fire.
I saw it yesterday, a matinee showing at The Lincoln. I was, of course, almost as hyped as many people are. I mean, Hermione is getting hotter and hotter, the effects are sweet, the story lines are getting more and more adult, and its just a cool series in general, right?
But as I was driving up to the movie, talking with candice, I was informed that that movie was only 2.5 hours long. How in the name of good literature and writing can they they fit a 752 page book into 2.5 hours, I asked, while still maintaining enough of the story to make it worthwhile?
Well, friends, I can now give you the honest answer.
They can’t. At least, in this case they failed miserably, IMHO. I mean, its still an ok movie, but it just didn’t work. Maybe they’ll go LOTRings style on us and release a DVD version that gets it.
The whole thing was very badly rushed. By which I mean the audience gets a bare minimum story/dialog scene to set up a longer action shot. The Quidditch World Cup is not seen, only the player’s entrance’s. Winky doesn’t exist. Rita only gets one interview and two articles. The whole “harry is a self serving git” plotline is barely even a background event, and certainly not one that I think anyone who hasn’t read the books will get.
I know they have to cut a lot out. Thats ok. It happens. It can even be done well, as proven by the LOTRs, and, to a certain extent, earlier HP movies. But they just didn’t get it done, this time. They needed more time. The sad thing is, a half hour more probably would’ve done it…although an hour might’ve been better. It felt like a bunch of cut scenes from an old computer game, to be honest. You know the ones….the ones where it took longer to load the cut scene from your cd then it did to play it? Yeah, those.
However, this weekend I have been reaffirming my love for main street belleville (the website doesn’t do it justice).
Friday night, in one of my fits of loneliness, I went for a one-man pub-crawl around belleville’s 5 main street bars. First was my favorite haunt, Castletown Geoghegan, then I strode all the way to the opposite end of the drag to visit 313, which is the local “alternative” joint. I think the bartender was trying to hit on me, until she realized that I am just not interesting…at least not for random conversation over a bar. There was a band from south florida playing there, one perfect minute , and I thought they were fairly good, except for the fact that I couldn’t really hear them because they were too loud for a little bar like that. I am now downloading a song of theirs to see what I really think.
Incidently, they were trying half-heartedly to get the crowd to pay attention to them, and failing. It was kind of sad. I always think its sad when a band, especially a good one, doesn’t have an audience. After about three songs, I moved on, having stayed an extra 45 minutes just to see the band. Between my bleeding ears and that heart-sickening feeling I get whenever there is a lost puppy I can’t take home or a decent band begging people to listen, I couldn’t stay. I kind of wish I’d had the money to buy their cds…they were selling 2 for $10, and I think it would’ve been worth while. But I’m trying to be cheap, as you’ll see when we finish the pub crawl.
Anyway, next I walked one down to Big Daddy’s 618, which doesn’t appear to have a website. I’d never been in, although I’d often thought about going in. Its a pretty standard meat-house, with big bouncers, a mix of old and young (since its the only meathouse in town) people, skimpy clothing, and a small dance floor playing crappy music. I had a coke, oggled some ass (mmm, thongs poking out of pants), and moved on pretty quickly. I suppose if I had somone in the area to go become geeks on the dance floor with, it would be worthwhile.
So then, it was the local jazz club….Main Steet Jazz and Blues. This is kind of a funny little place, the guys that work the bar are very much like the guys from High Fidelity. The beer there is cheap, so I had a $2 for 10 ounces beer, watched the 3 man jazz group play a song (I just can’t get into jazz so I can’t tell you if they’re any good), and moved on.
The last place was the ground floor, which is kind of a new-agey alternative place. True to the “new-agey alternative” style, they had a screamer band playing. The band was nearly as good as one-perfect minute, but they had people listening to them and bobbing along, so I stayed and listened and watched. This place had probably the most interesting people…a couple of girls dressed in pretty standard clubbing gear but clearly enjoying the music as much as their skanky, unbathed boyfriends, a shorn head, rolled up jeans and combat boot wearing chicka who I think might’ve been the bouncer (very tall, very muscley, and she followed a group of the clubber/skeezer peeps into the back with an attitude of “you’re not going to fuck each other in my bar, a couple of guys playing chess near front (the band was in the back), and finally, a very violent, very large gentlemen who started trying to start a fight when the music ended and someone told the band that they sucked (which, well, they did). He told the band that he would “go to jail for them” and went and got in the face of the kid that said they sucked. I left.
Incidently, I just listened to the three one perfect minute songs on their website…they’re ok, but they have that “every small alternative band” sound. I hope you know the one I’m talking about. Meaning they’re worth going to if they play near you, but I can’t see them making it big.
And lazy days…like yesterday. Yesterday I had big plans, and ended up doing basically nothing except watching harry potter, eating mexican, and playing computer games. Because I am a fool. But this weekend has been good none-the-less.
Oh, and I promised a money count. All that for less than 20, and I think I might’ve come in under 15. I got a coke at the ground floor as well as big daddy’s.
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