Oh the Humanity, or, The Terrorists Have Won

[kitchen_kink]

It's nights like this that I'm proud to be an American. Or something.

Tonight, my beloved imlad and I kept to a tradition we'd been exercising for a few years. We have these friends who live in Beacon Hill, and from the rooftop of their apartment building, you get a spectacular view of Boston's fireworks display.

Now these friends are people imlad knew before he met me. That is, well, they're mundanes. Mind you, they're awesome mundanes. Smart, funny, interesting people, into ancient Greece and modern art, who invite people over who are usually the same sorts of mundanes. We are, in a sense, their pet freaks, and we enjoy being so, and now and then we meet people there who look like they could be pushed over the edge with a feather.

This time, though, the gathering was smaller. Our favorite couple there was now a single, the wife having split and moved to Atlanta. The cooler people we'd met in the past were absent. Our host's busybody older sister and her obnoxious husband were there. We had some chit chat and some nice food, and then headed up to the roof to await the fireworks display.

All around were the other denizens of the building, most of whom seemed to be young and annoying, the types who yell inane things like "YEAH baby! DO it!" every time a big firework explodes. And as I sat and waited for the festivities to begin, I realized a profound truth that doesn't often occur to me anymore in my life: I was bored.

I had spent the afternoon surrounded by people I know and love. My people; my community. I'm very lucky to spend so much time in their embrace, enveloped in their love, sharing food and booze and touch and watching their kids run around underfoot. I don't think I express my gratitude often enough for the fact that, essentially, I'm shielded from the world by a different, smaller world that is being created, day by day, by the awesome people who surround me.

And here I was, on a rooftop in Beacon Hill, surrounded by the kind of people who would bring a television out onto a roofdeck so as, presumably, to watch the fireworks on television and in real life at the same time.

As if to make the final point, the fireworks began. And while at first they were very lovely as always, as the show went on, it began to generate so much smoke that eventually the fireworks couldn't be seen at all. The finale was a series of degenerate booms ringing out over a cheering crowd, who were probably actually crying out their dying breaths before they asphyxiated. Even the one thing that seemed like a guaranteed good time failed us this year, the spectacle we'd come for literally lost in a puff of smoke.

We flowed down the stairs and flopped on the couch, where we watched the post-processing on the local news while we waited out the first wave of people leaving the Esplanade. After a hyper-cheery report on the just-finished fireworks display, which apparently thrilled everyone to death (maybe literally) in spite of the fact that nobody could see it, the news did an editorial piece on why people in Massachusetts are really patriotic, in spite of the fact that Massachusetts is one of the bluest states in the nation.

Let me just say that again so it sinks in.

Even though Massachusetts is a really blue state, its citizens love celebrating their patriotism!

Because we all know that liberals and Democrats hate America.

So this was the idea of the report. The substance? Showing the happy people gathered on the Esplanade in front of the Hatch Shell, bedecked with styrofoam Liberty spikes and waving the American flag, smiling empty, vapid smiles while listening to the Pops grind out Tchaikovsky for the nth time (a tune, by the way, commemorating Russia's defeat of Napoleon in 1812, not our defeat of the British) while fireworks explode over their heads (or at least that's what it sounded like). Then, showing people in other cities, protesting the government's actions! Gasp! Horrors! People who disagree with the government!

How unpatriotic. Juxtapose that with a heartwarming story about a father and son who just came home from serving in Iraq together (they're so proud), and there's your dose of news for the night.

By this point I was so depressed I started to fall asleep, so we said our goodbyes and walked out onto the street, where a sinister police helicopter was circling, shining a searchlight into the alleys below. Streetlights flashed and the sidewalks swarmed with happy patriots trying to return to their homes. Outside of the Charles MGH station, these masses stood, waiting for the armed guards to let them pass in groups into the station.

Yes, really.

On the train home, my feet aching, I stood listening to the conversations around me. A loud man behind me said, "That's your problem, you're so negative about everything. That's why I hate my family. I hate them, because they're always so negative about everything, you know?!"

Do people even listen to what comes out of their mouths?

I don't have broadcast TV at home. The local news is telling people that dissent is unpatriotic, that they should be afraid to walk the streets at night, that being an American is about war and triumph and F15 flyovers and not about what freedom actually means. The circus we go through every year at the Hatch Shell celebrates all of that, and decides that the Raging Grannies in Portland Oregon or wherever are a bunch of commies who hate America.

And a 16-year-old looking kid stands outside the closing doors of a train and says, to someone safely crammed inside the car, "I'll kill you. I swear it. If I see you around, I'll kill you." I watch his dead eyes, flickering cold blue light like TV screens, as the train pulls painfully out of the station.

Back in Davis Square we meet somebody we know almost instantly; she comments on imlad's kilt as we mount the escalator. On the brick-lined street, a passing kid is singing "Holiday in Cambodia."

At last we're home, and I feel again the tenuousness of my position, the baby-fine but strong filament on which I soar in love. Those threads that weave themselves over me and my loved ones, in a web that I wish weren't necessary.

But it is. Because every time I venture into the larger world I'm reminded of one of the things that depresses me, and that I so wish weren't true: the vast majority of people are sheep. Docile, stupid, reactionary, ugly, greedy, empty-eyed consumers fueled by beer and fear. They're living the American nightmare. And only a very few will awaken in their lifetimes.

As we rounded the last corner to our house, a bumper sticker on a parked car caught my eye. Incongruously but piercingly, it said only, "Sift."

Comments

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I don't have any particularly insightful commentary to this, but it feels like the right place to say this: I barely know you, but everything I do know of you — including this post — makes me sad that this is the case. I'd very much like to change this at some point… and no, I'm not hitting on you.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I've often felt the same about you! Thank you. Perhaps we should remedy this discrepancy sometime.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I'd absolutely love to so remedy. Scheduling is, as ever, the problem, but yes, we should work on it.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Oh, and what network/station was that news broadcast on?

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming Fox.

The news is very different depending on which network you watch.

Meanwhile, here in the land of Republicans and guns (Los Angeles - Hollywood may be liberal, but most of the rest of the area isn't), people were protesting for Bush's impeachment.

dietrich, so far as the smoke goes, it sounds like you were caught upwind of the fireworks. It happens.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

There was also very little wind this year, so the smoke didn't dissipate particularly well.

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

It is hard to see from the inside, but I am aware of how thin is the bubble of geek and freak in which I live. The world outside that bubble is... Vast and dry. Sometimes it's bewildering, sometimes frightening, sometimes pitiful.

But the odd thing is... They're happy that way, for the most part. At least, most of them are no less happy than I. They work and live and love, worry about their children...

I can feel superior and curse them for idiots, I can fear what might happen if the rabble rose with pitchforks and torches, but I can't seem to fault them for having eyes cast too low to see the horizon.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to fault them for having eyes cast too low to see the horizon.

I find myself much more patient with people who choose the mainstream having at least considered the options, rather than people who simply refuse to open their eyes.

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking not so much of those who refuse to look as to those who are unaware that there is anything to look at.

[mrf-arch.livejournal.com]

I'd like to imagine that the advent of the internet has made a veritable smörgåsbord of opportunities for non-mainstreamness (and non-mainstream role models)available to all but the most poor or isolated, but that's probably over-optimistic of me. :-/

[uncledark.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd like to think that.

However, millions of options is often as bad as no options. With nothing to distinguish between A, B, and all the other offerings, one can get lost without context or support.

Adrift on an ocean of choice, without map or compass, as it were.

That, and there's a world of differene between reading about it on the web and interacting with it in person.

[cangelo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this post.
Ive had a not-so-great day, culminating in working the overnight shift at a hotel blocks away from the display.. so yeah.. sooo many of those soul-dead people marched like zombies up to their rooms, waiting for elevators and asking the same questions, complaining the same complaints..

I was truly and genuinely moved to tear up reading your post. You reminded me that there are real people out in the world, folks clinging to love and magic and community.

I needed to hear it, thank you for saying it. ;)

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

Or, as my good friend psybelle said:

So the country is another year older.

Doya think maybe now we can get away from the adolescent preoccupation with sex and guns and one-upsmanship?

Well essayed, as always. Love you.

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This post has been favorited for a whole MESS of reasons.

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

What's a mundane?

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

To me, a mundane is a person who lives chiefly inside the mainstream culture. It's not necessarily a pejorative, although I might use it pejoratively at times. Like my friends I reference in the beginning of the post: they're kind of normal folk, but they still choose to have me as a friend. They're aware of poly and kink and queerness and all of that, but they don't partake in it; neither do they denounce it. Essentially a mundane is a person who, whether consciously or unconsciously, tends to make choices about how they live that align with the norms of the overculture in which they find themselves.

In a more playful or even pejorative sense, one might talk about going out and "freaking the mundanes" (e.g., SCA people wearing full garb and weaponry to the supermarket), or might even use the word to refer to the entire overculture standing outside of, and presumably against, one's subculture(s).

And, as with any group pinned down by a single word, the more of them you get to know, the less and less actually mundane they become.

Well, some of them.

Musings from the former other half of entrope

[entrope.livejournal.com]

People ARE sheep. They bumble about, rant on the brief vignettes preprogrammed into their conscious and subconscious by the MPTB (Media Powers That Be), and try ever so hard not to fall off of the narrow path espoused by Conventional Wisdom.

And yet.

You were able to partake in an event shared by hundreds of thousands nearby, potentially millions more through the powers of that same MPTB. You had the opportunity to feel pity or even disgust as you boarded public transportation to the home of you and your special loved one.

The is more than many will ever have. You are the beneficiary of people who stood up to the conventional wisdom of 1776 and said a big old "Fuck You" to powers that should have annihilated us. You know deep down that the fools you must suffer on such nights as these have forgotten the true import of this, as you have said yourself.

And the natural desire is to cocoon yourself, wrap your body and mind in a safe familiar place. Why not?

But we are still fighting the Revolution, my dear. We must continue to fight every day. It merely takes a new form, and I leave it to you to find your particular weapons. Mine are the written word, design templates, and crash statistics. I have been attacked, quite personally, for my own small contributions to the betterment of this country, but I haven't stopped yet.

Get out there and fight in the way you know best. This Mundane has your back.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this comment. I had no way to articulate this, but you did it very well for me.

dietrich, I have little doubt that, if you met me on the street without knowing me, you'd call me a "mundane" too.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I have little doubt that, if you met me on the street without knowing me, you'd call me a "mundane" too.

This might be true, but as I explained to hahathor above, thinking of someone as a mundane doesn't cause me to dismiss them out of hand or devalue them as a person. And it probably wouldn't be long in talking to you before I figured out that you're not a mundane. :)

Also...hm. I'm not sure I *would* see you that way. It's impossible to say, of course, since I know you. But often I see people who seem to have this certain edge to them. It's not about how they're dressed or what buttons they have on their backpacks. It's mostly in the eyes, and sometimes an eschewing of certain popular fashion choices. It's a kind of intelligence and spark and awareness that you can see in people. And I think I would see that in you. I still might think you were a "mundane" in the sense of living more in the mainstream than I might choose to, but I doubt I'd think of you as one of the sheeplike masses. :)

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I'm mundane as well. After all, I'm only sleeping with one person, who happens to be of the opposite gender, and I have no desire to be involved with anyone else. I mention this because your definition of mundane involved not partaking of "poly and kink and queerness and all of that." As though mundanity (is that the correct form of the word, who knows?) is primarily a function of who you're sexually intimate with.

I happen to think you’re an awesome person. Not an awesome poly person, or an awesome bisexual, or an awesome woman: an awesome person with no constraints put upon it. I’d like to think that I’m more an awesome person than an awesome mundane. Because to me, being one of the "awesome mundanes" sounds an awful lot like being "one of the nice negroes."

That’s perhaps harsher than it should be, but as a mundane, I was hurt and insulted by your post. Your post also made me sad, because I hear you dismissing the bulk of humanity as worthless because of some externalities you observed. If you see the rest of your species as an undifferentiated mass of sheep, you can’t appreciate their wonderful individuality. People are more than Jews, or gays, or mundanes. They’re wonderful adventures to be had, new histories to learn. Everyone has their own personal experiences that are different from yours or mine. Because I think you’re awesome, I hope you’ll have a chance to share in as many of these rich and varied lives as you can.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[goat.livejournal.com]

Thank you thank you thank you...I couldn't figure out how to say what you just have.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry you felt insulted. I tried to explain my definition as thoroughly as I could, including the idea that 'mundanity' is not necessarily a bad thing. Just as I self-identify at times as a 'freak,' and sometimes need to explain to people that I don't mean freak in a pejorative sense.

I think you're an awesome person too. I'm trying hard not to dismiss the bulk of humanity, but so much of what I experience when I encounter people in large crowds outside of particular subcultures is people who have been largely taken in by the mainstream culture and have not bothered to consider that there might be other options besides trying to buy happiness through getting the latest gadget, or that something else might be possible besides becoming a "lawyer, doctor, or Indian chief," as my uncle used to say. As I tried to express in my comment to you above, when I use the word pejoratively it's about people who aren't at all self-aware, who would judge people like me and others I love simply because of the choices we make which seem so frightening and threatening to the status quo.

It frightens and depresses me, but I don't know how else to interpret the election and re-election of George W. Bush, the immense popularity of shows like Survivor, the overall insanity of the mainstream culture as I see it, than as an expression of the overall sheepishness of the vast majority of people. I'm mostly shielded from it by the people I spend the most time with, but I have to admit that when I go to bars, or attend open houses at universities, or walk the streets, or go to large public events, or ride the subway, I see evidence of it everywhere. Everybody wearing the same clothes. Everybody talking on their cell phones without regard for others. Everybody talking about sports or the latest reality show or what celebrities are doing this week. And pent-up aggression, rage barely suppressed.

You know, maybe I'll withdraw the definition as I gave it. Maybe it is entirely pejorative. Maybe it does refer to those masses of people who - and I'm sorry - but who simply aren't awake. Who aren't paying attention, and who aren't doing much more with their lives than doing what they're told.

By that definition, nobody I actually chose to spend time with is a mundane. But I'm not sure which definition is worse.

I want to believe that everyone is a special and unique snowflake, I do. And in fact, I do believe that. But can we agree that so few of them ever see full flower? That so many of them are asleep? I don't know. I know that you're someone I consider to be awake. Maybe that's what it means, after all. Maybe I need to make the definition an insult in order to really make it stick. Otherwise, perhaps you're right: it's like saying you're one of the "nice Negroes."

No. You're awake. You've considered and chosen your path. You know yourself, who you are, what you want, how you love. Maybe that's the only dividing line.

Would that even that one didn't exist.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I'd go beyond "few of them ever see full flower" to "none of us ever see full flower." I know I'm not fully conscious 100% of the time, and I'd reckon you're not either. How do you know that the people you looked down on from your perch high on Beacon Hill have never examined their lives, that they are not making conscious choices, that they are more full of pent-up aggression and rage than you and I?

I happen to know a lot of people who watch Survivor. I know a lot of people who enjoyed the fireworks (in fact, I'm one of them). And I have friends who voted for George Bush. Just because someone is talking on a cellphone about last night's reality TV show doesn't mean they're close-minded and unaware, any more than wearing a dog collar in public means they're some type of dangerous pervert.

And I think your post triggered such a strong response in me is that it sounds so very much like the way my grandmother & others of her generation used to talk about those who were neither white nor Jewish. Especially the part about, "I'm mostly shielded from it by the people I spend the most time with." I think it's unhealthy to have too little diversity in your social circles.

As I tried to express in my comment to you above, when I use the word pejoratively it's about people who aren't at all self-aware, who would judge people like me and others I love simply because of the choices we make which seem so frightening and threatening to the status quo.

It sounds to me as if you're judging people unlike you simply because of the choices they make which seem so frightening and threatening to your lifestyle.

You talk of a dividing line, as far as I can see, you're putting it there yourself, by projecting so much on these people you know nothing about except how they appear to you.

NB Let me know if you want me to drop this; I'm actually finding it quite helpful in terms of thinking about my own preconceptions and prejudices. However, I'm aware that I'm starting to sound very judgmental in my criticism of your judgment of others you consider overly judgmental. And this is your space, so if I'm getting out of line, let me know.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Hey there. I don't think you're getting out of line; I like lively debate in this space. I *do* want to continue this, either here or in person, until both of us feel better about the discussion - because I really like you and value your opinion, and while there are always things about which friends will be in conflict, I don't want us to be upset with each other.

My friend mrf_arch said above, "I find myself much more patient with people who choose the mainstream having at least considered the options, rather than people who simply refuse to open their eyes." And really, this is all I'm trying to get at. I'm only giving examples like GW and Survivor because they're easy emblems of the majority culture. And I know that I can't know how self-examining each and every person is.

What I do know is that there is, in fact, a majority culture - the image of the American dream sold to us by the media and the government. Each person decides to what degree he or she is going to buy into that culture. And my observation, from my experience, is that the more someone blindly buys into it, the less I can relate to them. And the less someone forges his or her own path, the more likely (I observe) that person is to be anything from blandly complacent to vaguely dissatisfied to seethingly repressed.

I know that no matter how I put this, I'm going to sound judgmental. But from my perspective, I see people like this - people who are going along with the Bush Administration's ideas, or who live in suburban gated communities and think that God is on our side in Iraq (again, stereotypical examples, but stay with me) - are the people who could take my poly friends' kids away because of their perceived immorality (this has happened), or who don't want my gay friends to be allowed to have the same legal rights as other married couples, or who would rather have the perceived safety of illegal wiretaps and searches of our library records than have our privacy respected.

I know I probably sound vitriolic, but I feel more and more that we're living under a quasi-fascist regime, and it is the majority that allows things like that to happen in ostensibly free societies. I don't judge you or anyone for being straight or monogamous or having a corporate job or even driving an SUV. But yes, I do judge people for blindly going along with a status quo that is repressive, not just of sexuality, but of individuality, and of dissent.

I agree with you that every individual deserves a chance to prove him or herself. But I think it always behooves one to remember that a person is always smarter than "the people." What I saw on the night of the 4th was not each person's hopes and dreams and no doubt highly variant levels of self-awareness. I saw mob behavior and the police control that goes along with it. And that, I think legitimately, scares me.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I would like to continue this too, but I have limited time today & am leaving first thing tomorrow for a week - perhaps we can get together for a coffee & more conversation after I get back.

A few quick points:

a) I am in no way upset with you, nor do I consider us to be in conflict. I have some problems with the way that you stated your position, and I'm trying to clarify both what you were intending to say and what it was that bothered me about how you said it. It's an opportunity for me to reflect on my own processes of perceiving and conceptualizing people far more than a criticism of the way you do it.

b) You don't sound in the least vitriolic. And I hope you don't feel vitriolic. As I said, I had a very strong reaction to the initial post, and spent a couple of hours revising my initial response (which really was out of line). To the extent that you've made an effort to appear fair and calm, and to be addressing my points rather than being either defensive or attacking, I'd say you're completely succeeding - which is one of the reasons I'd like to continue the conversation, but only when/if I have time to communicate as clearly and coherently as you have been doing.

c) I think there are a few things that bothered me about the initial post - and I don't know if any of them are things you intended as opposed to things I inferred based on your choice of language:

1) The way you described the people watching the fireworks sounded like you were making a lot of assumptions based on their external appearance. Just because someone is watching the fireworks (as you were) doesn't mean they like Survivor or voted for Bush, or are mundane. I know a lot of people who were on the Esplanade Friday night; many of them queer or poly or into kink - it's possible that you spotted one or more of them and grouped them with all the other "sheep" you saw.

2) This last comment has an undercurrent (which I agree with, and which saddens me, as it saddens you) of "It messed up that
our society, and group psychology, can prevent people from seeing all the choices available to them." The initial post sounded more like "These people are inferior to be because they've made different choices than I have."

3) You mention your concern about those "who would judge people like me and others I love simply because of the choices we make which seem so frightening and threatening to the status quo." But nobody watching the fireworks was judging you - they probably didn't even see or notice you. Yet you were judging them, despite the fact that their choices (to watch the fireworks, or to listen to Britney Spears, or to wear lots of Tommy Hilfiger) don't really impact you in any way.

It seems to me that you were projecting on the crowd watching the fireworks, a lot of frustration you feel about things in our society, which are - in fact - very fucked up. But if you start trying to find groups of others to blame these things on, you're starting down a slippery slope. I like to think that we on the left (i.e., the people who are correct about things :-) can view individuals more clearly than the people on the right who blithely blame teenage immigrant welfare mothers on dope for all the problems in the world.

I'm probably not going to be able to contribute any more to this conversation until after I return on the 14th. I'll read any response you post, but please don't think I'm blowing you off if I don't answer it.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

This is a satisfactory pause-point for me. :) A lot of the initial post, so you know, was written in the heat of the moment - on purpose; I wanted to get my feelings out on the page - and wasn't really meant to be a coherent political statement. If anything, it was exposing some of the feelings I'm ashamed of at times: the mirror work of my own intolerance. I assembled a pastiche of my experiences in order to build up to a larger emotional point about how I feel about the way the overculture operates to try and keep us compliant and stupid. In the process I know I come off sounding judgmental and intolerant, but at times it's important to me to get those things out, acknowledge and (partly thanks to you) examine those feelings.

It's part of my work to figure out how to walk the line as a freak in this world without becoming self-righteous and intolerant, without removing myself completely from the rest of the world. Part of my reaction was my own fear that I'm getting farther and farther from being able to enjoy time with people not in my social circle; that I'm getting so outside the mainstream that I feel like a space alien most of the time.

I've been doing a lot of work lately on being more permeable. Unfortunately, I've always been overly sensitive, and so I tend to swing between shielding too much and letting too much in. My goal is ultimately to have boundaries like a cell membrane: permeable to exactly the right things; decisively closed to those things that would harm me.

I'm also starting to get the sense that this needs to be another post. :) See you when you're back.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[dda.livejournal.com]

B.I.N.G.O.

Re: Musings from the former other half of entrope

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this. I know what you're saying is true, and I hope that in the midst of my despairing yawp that there was some sense of my knowledge of the "true meaning" of this holiday, as it were. It is awfully hard to stay engaged and connected, to keep fighting the good fight and not to just give up and run away to my subcultural colony. :)

Mostly, though, how I fight is by quietly being the change I wish to see in the world, and by not shutting my mouth when I have the opportunity to speak out.

[ardaraith.livejournal.com]

powerful


enough said.

[majes.livejournal.com]

Do people even listen to what comes out of their mouths?

If only, what a different world we would live in.

But it is. Because every time I venture into the larger world I'm reminded of one of the things that depresses me, and that I so wish weren't true: the vast majority of people are sheep. Docile, stupid, reactionary, ugly, greedy, empty-eyed consumers fueled by beer and fear. They're living the American nightmare. And only a very few will awaken in their lifetimes.

Oh, I'm still hopeful. But, ya know, I've been a fool before.

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Thank you for your honest reflections here, and on the rest of your journal.

I hope you don't mind another person reading you...

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

Not at all. Was this a stumble-across, or do we know each other?

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Sorry, we don't know each other. It was a very indirect linkage.

I came across dda in a comment to someone else's journal. I read his journal, found that most of his posts exist to support the status quo^*, and wasn't interested in reading more.

However, he pointed to your post. I read that post, read more of your public posts, and I was interested in reading more.

In short, yeah -- you were a stumble-across.

^* I should say: dda wasn't as interesting as, say, G. K. Chesterton when he supported the status quo.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

I haven't read much of dda's writing, but I know he has been watching this journal for a long time. He's made me kind offers in the past when I've needed practical favors, but I've never actually met him. I am a little disappointed at that link.

[dda.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect I don't have near the writing talent of G.K. Chesterton. On the other hand, I am pretty sure I have more programming talent.

As for supporting the status quo, I would humbly suggest that perhaps I'm not communicating what I really think (see note above about where my talent seems to lie).

In any case, thanks for checking out my journal, even if it wasn't to your taste.