"Independence" Day

Judas Priest, but I'm loathing this holiday even more than usual this year. It mostly has to do with the fact that Dearest is under the weather, but can't get any consistent rest. It's not even close to dark out, but the fireworks have been going off (on and off) for hours. The only surprise--and mercy--is that the neighbor's drama queen beagle hasn't been going off as well.

Why-oh-why can't we have sensible holidays that revolve around the tangible rather than the abstract? Why isn't there a Humane Society holiday? Or a Local Food Pantry Day? (The closest I can come to that is Eid Al Fitr, actually, but I'll be d--ned if I sign on to that creed, either...)

One of my college History profs. claimed that the notion of "freedom" in Colonial America was less a matter of freedom from the British empire than it was what he called "freedom from the vices of one's neighbors."

Listen. I have absolutely no yuppie ambitions of tearing up a portion of forest to "live out in the country." But, daaaaang. If I want to listen to music, that's what an iPod is for. If I want to stroke my ego with the constant sense of presence that a dog brings, I'll go to the pound and adopt one. If I want to listen to drunken inanity at midnight, I'll crash yer friggin' party. If I want to hear brat-children scream incessantly, I'll squeeze out a few of my own and skip that fussy little nicety we call parental discipline.

You know: Swinging arms meeting noses and all that. And bah humbug to any "freedom" that doesn't have responsibility as its B-side

Paging Dean Wormer...

Oh, for pity's sake, next we'll all be on double-secret probation: FBI compounds mystery with secret justification of gag order. Hmmph. Alberto and the gang must've been Omega Theta Pi...

Some musing on the overlap of the conservative and Christian Right

A recent blog post at Stupid Evil Bastard made me think again that a certain fundamentalist mentality overlaps on the right. People there tend to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution in the way they read the Bible, think in terms of the Founding Fathers in the same terms as prophets or saints, and tend to want to impose their notion of 1776 "fundamentalism" in rather the same manner.

If it didn't make me want to throw up in my mouth, I'd laugh. Under the "America" that the Founding Fathers envisioned, most of these folks wouldn't own enough property (in relative terms) to vote...and that's assuming that they weren't considered chattel in the mock-aristocracy that prevailed in post-Colonial America.

Dearest likes to say that ignorance can be cured; stupidity is forever. I'm not even sure that ignorance is that easy to overcome. I just want to wedgie the next mouth-breather who repeats the lie that liberalism and The Enlightenment are somehow antithetical to the America we've managed to create in spite of--d'ya hear me? IN SPITE OF--class warfare and sexism and racism and genocide and every artificial distinction that oozes from the underbelly of human nature.

Enough hagiography. And enough pretending that the Constitution was written on stone tables brought down from Mount Vernon by George Washington. (Eek--throw in Charlton Heston and the NRA and you now have the Right in a nutshell. Sorry 'bout the mental image, folks...)

Awesome two liner

From today's Questionable Content webcomic:

Intern: "Doesn't it bother you to get paid so much for such utter crap?"
Sven: "Meh. My artistic integrity wears a gimp suit and lives in a box."

I think that you can fairly say the same thing about integrity in general in many, many circles.

Playing catch-up...

...and hoping that I'm not actually chasing my tail.

Huzzahs and handsprings, but the semester's done and the backlog is starting to recede a bit. Or at least it feels as though I can start to swim to shore after treading water for so long.

I had to go heads-down at work today to fill in for QA, and found myself listening to an album that I also had (on cassette, rendered off vinyl for that purpose) a quarter-century ago. And in realizing its age--and in consequence my own, arithmetic being implacable that way--I also thought, "Youth is overrated, but health is not."

So here's to looking ahead at a relatively unencumbered summer, with--almost assuredly--more breathing room for the things I love. Including writing for its own sake.

Oh, yeah

First off, apologies for the (mostly) uncharacteristic hiatus. A few projects have stacked up, and I'm still behind. But this bijou from Daily Kos was too precious not to pass on: Rape is "Enhanced Dating".

'Nuff said.

Of bumper-marks and puppy-noses

Earlier today, I felt like the proverbial puppy who caught the car it was chasing--the combination of exhilaration overlaid with "Now what?" The graphic artist who created some marketing images for me wrote to know whether I'd be interested in collaborating on a website that needs back-end code and database work.

Truth be told, I was hoping for exactly that scenario last Fall when I first commissioned the graphics from him. I can't yet afford to drop the day-job and freelance-fund larger projects at the moment. Having someone else pounding the pavement, drubbing up business seemed like a rather efficient way to build a portfolio before hanging out one's own shingle.

Yet--you knew there would be a "yet," didn't you?--while the work started out well enough, I had to prod the artist for its completion. Today, when I requested meeting to discuss the project, there was no response. Only this evening came a not-reply to the effect that he had somehow lost the client's phone number and didn't have an email address.

Not promising omens, any of them. So I did my due diligence and emailed the questions that had come to mind as I looked at the proposed website content and the example. But I fail to see how the gig will progress any further. A large part of me is straining at the metaphorical leash toward building a business of my own, so the disappointment is pretty palpable at the moment. The bounce in my step and glitter in my eye from this morning are gone.

So, if you'll excuse me, I need to go find them.