So I was bouncing around downtown this morning, like I do, all yuppified with Sketchers and Starbucks, when two homeless looking gentlemen accosted me outside a liquor store.
“Hey man, we ain’t gonna lie. We got the shakes. You got any change?” I had to admire their honesty. They wanted booze, and by god, who am I to deny anyone a healthy dose of alcoholic pleasure?
Except I never have change. Does anyone? In a debited, credited, sanitized electronic world, there is almost no reason to carry around cash in any amounts. I would have given them a handful of change, but after digging around in my backpack, I came up with about three cents and a half-used bottle of poppers (we’ll really not discuss why those were there. It’s a long story, and it doesn’t actually involve porn - or my using them).
Which is why I think we need an electronic homeless person card. Stay with me on this. We get a small electronic swipe thingy (thingy - from the Icelandic meaning “sophisticated electronic equipment”) and give them to the homeless at various shelters. Commuting, professional types, if they are so inclined, can purchase little pre-paid cards that, when swiped, credit the homeless person’s thingy with a dollar. At the end of the day, the homeless can go to little stations and have their swipes reimbursed for cash.
I would totally use this. Put ten bucks on a card, and if the mood strikes, swipe the equivalent of the pan-handler atm as I’m walking by.
I’m just saying, in this day and age, it would seem to me much harder for the disdomestically situated to earn their living by haranguing others when said others are working in an increasingly cashless economy. I’m sure some municipality somewhere would actually give this crazy-assed idea a go. Probably San Francisco. If anyone does, I’ll take 5%. Call it a gift.
As much any gay Yankee Catholic can, I try to be fairly patient and tolerant of American southerners. Unlike most gays, I’m not one to heap tired, stereotypical scorn on the rural folk and their, ah, evangelical eccentricities. I have a general fondness and affection for the region and the people, and I genuinely enjoy visiting whenever I’m able.
That being said.
Was there some kind of Banjo and Cousin festival in Chicago over the weekend? I had to clock roughly six hours on the local expressways, and car after car after car with southern plates and a veritable library of religious bumper stickers and symbols insisted on cruising right in front of me without reprieve.
Now, I’m not given to touring through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama with “Hooray for abortion!” or “Sodomy is amazing!” plastered on my vehicle - at least, not without a handgun. Is it too much to ask that evangelical tourists not print, say, the entire Bible on their car?
Some might posit that perhaps all this Christian imagery appearing during my various commutes might just be a sign from God. Maybe so, but I patently refuse to worship any deity who would send messages while changing lanes sixty-four times without signaling, trying to kill me by slowing down for no reason whatsoever, and using the gospels to distract from the vitally important task of driving the car while reading a book and eating Subway.
It’s the Dan Ryan, not the pulpit, and you are not a God-sponsered Nascar driver for Christ, no matter how many Jesus decals you have. If you promise not to paint your car a soothing off-crucifixion, I promise I’ll keep my hedonism in the Great Lakes region. Deal?
Kara’s too obvious. My money’s on Zak.
I stumbled across a fascinating, new Web site today.
Well, I was about 80 percent right with my prognostications, which isn’t a bad percentage for baseball, but I’ll be keeping my day job anyway.
I said Hillary had much more at stake last night than Obama, which she clearly did. I said she needed a knock-out punch, which was admittedly obvious. I said if she didn’t win both Indiana and North Carolina that superdelegates would start to break for Obama, and it sounds like they will. And I predicted a Hillary win in Indiana and an Obama win in North Carolina, each by a “few points.” OK, I was half right about that one.
Hillary’s razor-thin margin in Indiana combined with getting blown out in North Carolina proved me wrong about it being a “wash” and a race that would continue at least until June 3 and possibly until the convention. Granted, it might yet, but Hillary’s victory scenarios are getting beyond ludicrous:
ABC: Stephanopoulos said despite the race going on “this nomination fight is over,” Obama’s lead “can’t be overcome” in elected delegates. Says she’s depending on Oregon, seating full delegations of Michigan, Florida and a “revelation” on the scale of another Rev. Wright controversy to see any sort of comeback.
In case it weren’t already clear, I’ve made my mind up: I’m for McCain. So as much as I would like to see Hillary soldier on and tear her party apart, and to prove right those of us who believe she puts personal power before country or party, the writing will be on the wall in increasingly large fonts in the days ahead.
This has been a year with some of the greatest stunners in modern political history: the precipitous collapse of a Democratic front-runner who would have been forgiven for measuring the White House draperies as early as 2006 or 2007, the rise of an African-American candidate who was sitting in a state legislature barely three years ago, and the miraculous resurrection of a man whom everyone thought time had long since passed by, a man who got the nomination despite the popular belief that only the most hard-line of a conservative would be acceptable to the modern GOP.
I think it will be a humdinger of a general election: Two men with substantial appeal beyond a narrow base, two men who have demonstrated civility to a degree in their campaigns that made them seem almost unelectable, two great and positive campaigners. But we will also have a stark choice: on Iraq, on a host of domestic issues, on a record that is rife for dissection versus a virtual cipher, on “youth versus experience,” on “hope” and “change” versus a known quantity.
For the first time in a long time, I do not dread the prospect of a November in a year divisible by four.
People in the Midwest are made of much stronger stuff than most of us here on the East Coast. They have to be; they have real earthquakes there.
Here in DC, we spend the whole day debating whether it even was an earthquake. (No, I didn’t feel a thing.)
I uploaded my segment from yesterday’s “Blog Bunker” show on Sirius channel 110. I woulda thrown some F-bombs (suck it, FCC!), because I heard people using them earlier in the day, but I didn’t want to do so before the host, and he never did.
Topics include McCain’s age, and my predictions in Indiana and North Carolina.
I also left on the show’s introduction because it’s so, I don’t know, vainglorious. It makes bloggers appear as we might like to think we are, not as we actually are.
I am scheduled to be on the show “Blog Bunker” today at 5 p.m. EDT on the Indie Talk channel, Sirius Satellite Radio channel 110.
See? Some people do believe that I’m at least somewhat centrist!
If I find a call-in number, I’ll update this post with it.
UPDATE: I think the call-in number is 1-866-994-6343.
I never contemplated writing an entry like this. I understand why people do — getting the words out is good therapy sometimes — but I couldn’t see doing it myself. I thought it would feel too self-indulgent.
Then again, for better or worse, I have always been my own therapist. And it’s Sunday afternoon… and Bradykins is out of town so I’m alone… and if I play another game of Web Sudoku I’ll probably scream. So maybe it’s all right to be self-indulgent.
This morning I learned that, barring a non-medical miracle, my mother will probably die within the next 24 hours. Certainly within the next 72. This is not a shock, really. More than fifty years after being diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, she has already beaten the early odds. For the past six years her health has been extremely precarious, with a mounting list of serious ailments, including major respiratory problems, most likely the result of prolonged steroid treatments for the Crohn’s. The family has been braced for this day for quite some time.
She entered the hospital yet again the other day and, this time, made an informed decision to not go through the increasingly complex routine. No respirator… no draining of fluid from her lungs… no monitors… nothing but morphine for the pain and oxygen to help her breathe. She was given a DNR wrist band and moved into a ‘transition’ ward, which is a nice enough euphemism, I guess. This morning the doctor examined her and gave her husband the shortened timeline.
Her three children all agree that she made the right decision. I cannot imagine the emotional pain she felt when she consciously made the decision that it was time for her to die, but I know it pales compared to the physical pain she has endured… pain that would only get worse, never better.
I may disappear for a few days, but just to keep my head together. I won’t be rushing home to Rochester. After a few dozen phone calls over the weekend — and you know I am taking this seriously, because I hate the telephone — my brother, sister and I decided that nothing would be accomplished by gathering around the deathbed. We’ll get together at a later date to celebrate her life. In the meantime, we can take a measure of solace in knowing that the entire family was able to gather in late March, when her health and mental awareness were quite good. I think we all would prefer to remember that day, not the day that will come early this week.
As you may recall, I have recently been tracking my family tree. There is order in the chart, as generations come and go. It’s a reminder that the cumulative effect of many lives, intertwined, is vast. The lives lived, the people loved, the children nourished and raised to adulthood… that’s what ‘family’ looks like on paper.
Real life isn’t as orderly, of course. And it’s all too brief.
Still, at some point this week I’ll probably log on to my family tree to add the date of death for Barbara Ann Fisher Byrnes Nixon, 1937-2008.
And I will mourn, in my own way, but also remember those better days. Because the measure of a life should be in the joy and happiness it brought, not how it ended.
Sean Bugg is nothing if not fair. I knew that before, but he proved it again with this follow-up to his interview with Mark Lee, about which I blogged this week.
Sean said I had “harsh” comments about both his interview itself and about Mark’s comments. Yes, my blog is my id, but I honestly meant it to be much more of the latter than the former. It wasn’t a softball interview by any means, and Sean rightly pointed out that it was a piece about the reopening of a bar, not the reopening of the beaten-horse-dead debate over smoking in DC bars.
Still, I think the aftermath of the smoking ban is worth a truly enterprising, fact-heavy treatment, whether in MW, the Blade or elsewhere: Can any bar closures reasonably be traced to the smoking ban? How many bars have applied for (and won) a hardship exemption? If things are as bad as Mark Lee says they are, why did he reopen Lizard Lounge, and why have so many other opened in the wake of the ban? What has happened to smoking rates generally and in the gay community specifically since the ban? What statistics can be unearthed regarding the number of smoking patrons who have quit going to bars entirely and the number of nonsmoking patrons who have begun going to bars, or go more often, because of the ban?
I feel strongly about this issue (couldn’t tell, couldja?), but I am not impervious to reason and facts.
No, as Robbie says, one doesn’t have to go to a bar. But I believe the ban is consistent with the libertarian premise of “your right to swing your fist ending where my nose begins.” Again, it is a public accommodation, and I should be able to enjoy it without doing unavoidable harm to myself. (Robbie’s concert analogy is inapt: It is possible both to simultaneously enjoy a concert and to easily protect one’s ears. Gas masks in a smoky bar are a far more costly and less practical option.)
By the way, I learned about Sean’s follow-up via — surprise — an email from Mark Lee’s ATLAS Events. He emailed both the link and Sean’s piece in full, which makes me wonder whether it was sent just to me or to the entire list. You see, Mark has a bad habit (among others) of Dowdifying news articles he has sent about the smoking ban, redacting sentences and paragraphs that don’t support his positions. A few days ago, I responded to one of his emails with that very criticism. So is the latest email a coincidence? Or a shot across the bow, mayhaps?
At any rate, Mark gets half a cheer from me for sending the unexpurgated version of Sean’s piece, and at least three-quarters of a cheer if it went to his entire list.
While we’re on the subject of Metro Weekly, why on Earth can’t Perez Hilton take a picture without his jaw comically agape, as if he were a snake about to consume an especially large rodent?