Slow Down

I'm not promising anything, but it's looking more and more like a slow summer for blogging. Yes, my job that requires I sit in front of a computer and answer questions will have minimal hours and we will see a corresponding down shift in blog entries. I've come upon newer jobs that require - how should I say this - ACTUAL WORK. This may cut into my blogging time.

I'm sort of kidding about that, as my SPO job is one I quite like and think does require a certain set of skills and time at work, but it also affords ample time for blog entries, whereas it's looking more and more like these others won't.

It is also summer, which means I will be spending my free time less in front of a computer and more on the tennis court, on the road, or pretty much anywhere that's not a computer.

I'll still have time on Sunday AM and the occassional night time blog, but if I have any hope of writing AND working AND doing these productions...well....something's gotta give (head nod Bruce Bloch).

All of this being said, I had a realization today about liberals. It's not that I'm not liberal, which I am. I think I've just been exposed to too many liberals for too long and at a certain point you just grow tired of IT, no matter what IT is. Take for instance, El Pollo Loco. Good chicken. Like the mac and cheese. But if you have it every day - well, I don't want to even think about it. And in comparing liberals to El Pollo Loco, you think I'm being flippant, but I'm not entirely sure who has the right to be insulted - El Pollo Loco runs a hell of a business. Which is more than the whole "liberal" thing has become.

I just grow so tired of people telling me how wrong everything is, how everything in America is racist, and corrupt, and big business sucks, and the whole electoral system is broken, and the environment is getting ruined, and people are all such assholes waiting to take advantage of each other, and the war in iraq is a disaster, and the media and fox news are ruining the country, and entire midwest are a bunch of idiots, and foreign countries are so much better at everything from food to film to healthcare to language to election systems, and how things were so much better in some different place at some different time, and blah, blah fucking blah. Let's just say, as a thought experiment, all of this was Correct - who, of all the normal people out there who just want to do the right thing, have a nice job and a nice family, wants to listen to all this whining?

And I understand this same thing goes on in conservative country, with the talk radio shows ranting and raving about immigrants and terrorists and whatever it is they are whining about. I guessing if I lived there, I'd grow super sick and tired of them. But I don't. I live here and don't see oppressive racist or sexist conditions. I don't see a broken system. I've visited other countries and enjoyed my time there, but there isn't a single one where I've gone and felt remotely at home, the way I do when I come back to California. I like that feeling of coming home. I see big business and I think, shit, I'm glad I don't have to pump oil out of the ground myself to run my car and enjoy a McDonalds Number 3 meal every now and then - even though I'm still a closet liberal in that I distrust the overall, big term, business practices (shelving innovation in favor of market share, for instance).

I read about Iraq and think it's a mess. But I also read about Sudan and North Korea and Ivory Coast and Venezuela and Cuba and Haiti and Rwanda and Palestine and think, they too, are a mess. And I'm not sure what to do about any of it. What's frustrating is that I KNOW these messy places affect us, that the US is visible in these messy places, whether we want to be or not, and therefore are not a neutral presense. We are a node, a node which people can either rally around or rally against, whether we are physically, emotionally, politically, economically, present OR not. We are never neutral and we are not always the ones determining what is being done for or against our name. This is what happens in a mess.

So look, this started as a short entry, and turned into a rant. What a wonderful world.