Slacker, (Not Really A)
Out in meatspace, time is kicking Your Montag’s ass with extreme prejudice. It is a cycle I only hope to break out of in the next 14 years or so. In the short term, it’s going to be especially punishing over the next two weeks. The daily grind is now taking up approximately 26 hours of my time a day. I’ll post when I can, but things will likely be sketchy here for the next few days.
Here’s what’s on my mind that I may or may not ever have time to develop:
- The idea of a Giuliani presidency scares the bejeepers out of me. (And yes, I think it’s possible that things could possibly get worse, presidency wise, than they are now. Like, if someone smarter, with greater authoritarian tendencies, takes up the reigns of this new unprecedented presidential power. You know: police-state-stuff.)
- I wrote about a third of a post, Against Sexism in Our Political Discourse, which I couldn’t manage to finish in time for ‘Blog Against Sexism Day’ last Thursday.
- I still have a problem with standardized testing as the almost exclusive means of evaluating edumacation. Things seem to get worser and worser in this department, as it looks like our local schools’ “literacy” curriculum is going to end up creating a “Writing Standard” based mainly on mastery of the fucking soulless Five Paragraph Essay formula. (I hope to one day write a five paragraph essay on Why the Five Paragraph Essay Formula is SHIT.)
- I think there is something up with congressional districts, whereby they are set up in such a way that if Republicans were to win all the ones they should, they could garner a vast majority of the seats in Congress, without all the mess and bother of having to win the popular vote. Assuming electoral politics is worth participating in and preserving, this doesn’t seem right. (At least I’d hoped to look into that one day.)
- Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. — Best. Book. EVAR. But I need to do some more reading and report back to Fehlleistungen— if not you too, Dear Reader —On the Development of Transfinite Set Theory, or at least on whatever feeble sense my feeble mind can make of it, if any, with a little reading. (I somehow doubt this subject will be as accessible as the brilliant essay on Ethics. (Not a five paragraph essay, by the way.))
- Got a letter from the GOP the other day, opened it and read it, it said they were suckas. Well it was an email, and the subject line was, “Master and Commander.” (Guess who.) Anyway, there was a point in there I wanted to
ridiculeaddress. - I miss Spalding Gray. I understand his wife is putting together a show of readings of some of his unreleased work, and that there is a documentary film about him in the works.
- There is more, but I’m not going to go into anymore of it here. This whiny ‘I don’t have time to post’ post has already taken too much time. (Which I don’t have.)
Dear Reader, if you are reading this— and by definition, you are —and you get around to writing about any of the above before I do, holler. We’ll post a link to your website, or if you don’t have a blog, we’ll consider posting it here if you like.
Your Montag will also be neglecting my posting duties over to I Miss Fafblog, Spot! but still, I will do what I can. Honest.
Yes. Gerrymandering is a problem, but it’s not just Republican districts that make use of this form of job security. David Brin has a longish essay on this you might enjoy giving a read.
BTW: Hi! Missed seeing you around. FWIW, Meatspace continues to kick my ass too. I feel your pain bro.
Thanks for the link. I look forward to reading it when I have the time.
I don’t doubt that both parties use the Gerrymandering strategy, but I believe that I read and heard that the lay of the land favors the R’s over the D’s as it is now. I’ll be the first to admit that I may have misunderstood, though.
Ok, wait, I found what I read on it: here. not much there, really. Just enough to get me thinking.
Missed seeing you around, too. Damn demands of the real world!
While I agree the current mix favors Rs over Ds, the authors of Off Center (which Alterman mentions) make my point that it’s a problem not just because of Republicans. Democrats favor gerrymandering too and because of unintended consequences, the Rs stand a greater than normal chance of winning. That being said, I still despise today’s Republican party of course. I guess what I’m trying to say here in so many words is that it’s a systemic problem. I’ll be interested in knowing what you think of Brin’s points. He’s long winded but I do think there’s some gold in there.