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From the Desk of Rusty Spell
Barack the Vote
(10-29-08) I guess you've noticed my two big honkin' Obama support
buttons on my front page. I was initially embarrassed about doing
such a thing, but I eventually realized the embarrassment was only
because it's not what you'd expect of me. Who expects me to get
gung-ho about an election? I had to convince myself that it was my
right to support and promote a candidate. I was stupid for being
embarrassed at all, when I think of how insanely openly supportive
others are. Anyway, I thought Rusty Spell Dot Com followers might
want to hear a few of my thoughts.
My being excited about Obama might be
compared to when I get excited about a really good song on Top 40 radio.
I normally hate Top 40 radio. I'm an indie rock kid. I have
to buy my own records because the radio doesn't speak to me. I'm
not going to choose, for my listening pleasure, between Britney Spears
and Christina Aguilera (or George W. Bush and John Kerry, if you
prefer). When Barack Obama came along, it was like when OutKast
hit the Top 40. Finally something I can get behind.
Need another analogy? Let's say
there's a vote for the "school song" at my high school. Among the
candidates is a popular song that I simply don't like ("Vision of Love"
by Mariah Carey), an even more popular song that I like a good deal
("Hey Ya!" by OutKast), and a song that I absolutely love but that isn't
really popular and that only a small portion of the student population
is even aware of ("New Partner" by Bonnie Prince Billy). Which do
I vote for? Well, I obviously don't want the Mariah Carey song.
No matter how popular it is, I simply don't like it. I think it's
repulsive. Do I vote for the Bonnie Prince Billy song that I
absolutely love? No. I vote for OutKast. Why don't I
vote for the song I love? Here's why: because the song is meant to
be the school song, not the Rusty Spell song.
I like Barack because it seems like he wants
to represent the entire country, not just those who vote for him.
Whoever wins is supposed to be the President of the United States, not
the President of the Blue States or Red States. (Bush wasn't
president of any states, by the way. He and Cheney just did
whatever the fuck they wanted.) Barack may not line up with me
100% on what I believe, but is that the most important thing--what I
believe? I took one of those dumb quizzes today where you answer
how you feel about issues (strongly agree, strongly disagree, etc.) and
it tells you who you "should vote for." According to the dumb quiz
(which seemed better than others, actually), I was 95% with Ralph Nader,
93% with Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, and much further down at
69% with Barack Obama (which is still pretty high, of course).
But where we differ is a good thing.
When I vote, I'm not simply voting for someone who simply represents my
ideals (although that's certainly a part of it), but someone who
represents where the ideals of the country itself should be.
Issues aren't the only issue. If they were, Nader would be my guy.
Of course, I also don't like it when voters vote without considering the
issues at all, or when they pick one issue and put all of their money
into it.
You want to know the number one reason I
like Obama so much? He thinks.
When he answers questions, his answers are
thoughtful. Thoughtful, as opposed to rehearsed (and
certainly not thoughtless or dumb). And, of course, he's smart.
After eight years of George W. Bush, he sounds like the most intelligent
man who's ever lived. So does John McCain. I've been
accustomed to the leader of the country not knowing what he's talking
about, paired with treating us like children ("evil-doers," etc.).
Both candidates are (holy crap!) intelligent this time. This
immediate shock has caused some idiots to say things like "Barack is
being too professorial." What if my students said I was being too
professorial? I mean, they like the fact that I'm down to earth
and can speak to them in non-academic language, but eventually they want
to learn a little something about Beowulf. I don't think
they're attacking Obama's tone. (I hope not. He's downright
folksy sometimes.) I think they're attacking his intelligence.
Intelligence, thanks to Bush, is no longer associated with being
presidential.
Perhaps this is why McCain, someone I used
to admire a great deal, sounds more and more like an idiot these days.
McCain has sold his soul to the devil of campaigning, sacrificing all of
his previous ideals to the altar of winning, and now that he's losing,
he's confused. Barack, meanwhile, has held fast to the idea that
being smart might actually be the route to take for a change, and he's
doing well. My hope if McCain wins is that the old McCain will
return. The powers of the campaign trail will release their hold
and he'll return to his normal state. This McCain campaign is the
stuff of Shakespearian tragedy. I feel sorry for the poor man.
If he hadn't decided to trade in his individuality for the title of Joe
the Republican, I might have considered voting for the guy.
In case I didn't make this clear with the
Britney vs. Christina allegory, I don't like the idea of voting
against someone. For the past two elections, I've exercised my
right not to vote. My hope was that, rather than sending a message
of apathy, my non-vote (and others' non-votes) sent a message that our
choices were simply not good enough. I think it may have worked.
In this election, we have two candidates who are better than Bush, Gore,
and Kerry combined.
This is another reason to like Obama.
He allows us to vote for him, not just "against McCain."
Usually when he "attacks" McCain, it's not simply to say "I'm not like
him" (which was the John Kerry platform: "I'm Not Bush"), but to point
out why he feels his viewpoint is the more correct one. It's not
an attack; it's a difference of opinion. I'll admit, of course, to
some cases of pure attack, but that's not the majority of what you see.
McCain does attack, but he seems to do so reluctantly, as if (again)
he's being told what to do or feels it's what he has to do in order to
win. His heart isn't in it, which makes him sympathetic but also
pitiful. He's lets his running mate do the bulk attacking for him
(stirring up crowds of booers). You know that person who hears a
few news narratives on the morning radio show and uses those bits of
info to speak loudly, smugly, and sarcastically about the subject while
not actually knowing what she's talking about? That's our Sarah!
She's walking, talking uninformed misinformation. My least
intelligent eighteen-year-old student seems more equipped to become
Vice-President. At least they know what a VP is.
P.S. Joe Biden just might be a cock. So
let's hope that McCain lives a long life or that the skinheads don't get
to Obama.
Hey, wanna talk about race? If someone
were voting for Barack Obama only because he is black, then I
feel that's a strong enough reason. I would support that reason.
It's been over 400 years since slavery began in the colonies, 200 years
since our first president, over 140 years since the end of slavery, and
over 40 years since Martin Luther King's assassination. Maybe we
can begin, finally, to realize that African-Americans have been in this
country for as long as European-Americans have. I love, love, love
our country's ideals, but we still haven't lived up to them. I
suppose we all know that it's not coincidence that we've only elected
white Christians (and only one Catholic).
Piled now onto the fear of the black man is
fear of the Muslim. Maybe we can have a Muslim president
one day (ain't no law again' it). Hey, maybe we can even have a
black president one day (since Obama was raised by his white
mother--in the meantime, I'll be happy to have someone of mixed race,
another milestone). The woman they chose to run for vice-president, it just
so happens, has a penis, so better luck next time there. I pray to
God one day for an openly atheist president.
Anyway, yes, Obama's browny skin color is
reason enough for me if it's reason enough for you.
Back to the buttons. I chose to put up
my "Independents for Obama" button. (That's also the button I
bought, the first time I've ever given money to a candidate.) When
I registered to vote in Alabama, I didn't even mark myself as
"Independent." I marked "nothing" (or whatever the equivalent
was). I certainly didn't mark any party. I didn't want
Independent to seem like its own party or philosophy--like the word
moderate or non-denominational. I really want to be
nothing. But I chose that button because it was the one that most
closely spoke to what had happened: I was an independent political
thinker for whom Barack Obama seemed the best candidate. Saying it
this way made me feel a little more comfortable about going public with
my support. I didn't want to seem like some jack-ass (sorry:
donkey) who just went with whatever the Democrats picked. (I
wouldn't have voted for Hilary, and she didn't even have a penis.)
I guess I've written enough. My folks
were always private about their politics; they kept who they voted for a
secret. For a while, it seemed to me crude when folks would be so
open about who they were supporting. It turned me off. My
parents' behavior was only a small part of that feeling. My
general personality accounted for the rest, combined with the fact that
I've never truly been enamored with a presidential candidate during my
lifetime. When I was a kid, I thought I liked Reagan, but it was
only because I was told I liked him. It was like rooting for the
football team that your brother liked. I grew up and decided I
didn't like football at all, but this year a new team emerged that...
oh, nevermind. You've had enough metaphors. Obama yo mama.
A Collection of Quotations About God,
Creation, Time, and the History and Future of Mankind and Beyond
(9-25-08) A new variety raised by man will be a far more important
and interesting subject for study than one more species added to the
infinitude of already recorded species. Our classifications will come to
be, as far as they can be so made, genealogies; and will then truly give
what may be called the plan of creation.
During early
periods of the earth's history, when the forms of life were
probably fewer and simpler, the rate of change was probably
slower; and at the first dawn of life, when very few forms
of the simplest structure existed, the rate of change may
have been slow in an extreme degree. The whole history of
the world, as at present known, although of a length quite
incomprehensible by us, will hereafter be recognized as a
mere fragment of time, compared with the ages which have
elapsed since the first creature, the progenitor of
innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created.
Authors of the
highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view
that each species has been independently created. To my mind
it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on
matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of
the past and present inhabitants of the world should have
been due to secondary causes, like those determining the
birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings
not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of
some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the
Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become
ennobled.
As all the
living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those
which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel
certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never
once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the
whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a
secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as
natural selection works solely by and for the good of each
being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to
progress towards perfection.
It is
interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with
many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes,
with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling
through the damp earth, and to reflect that these
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other,
and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all
been produced by laws acting around us. . . . There is
grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers,
having been originally breathed into a few forms or into
one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a
beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
have been, and are being, evolved.
-- Charles
Darwin,
The Origin of Species
The Wire Sucks
(9-19-08) No one else on the internet seems to be saying it (I
couldn't find anyone who gave The Wire less than four stars on
Netflix--most gave five), so I'll say it. "The Wire sucks."
It's a racist piece of shit that somehow makes liberal whites feel less
racist. The only reason they watch it, I think, is because there
was some rave about it on NPR, which is where liberal whites learn what
they're supposed to enjoy. There's no difference between it and
some other stupid "gritty" TV cop show except that this one is more
racist and uses the word fuck a lot.
How I'm Spending My Summer Vacation
(5-9-08) It's not exactly my summer vacation yet, since I still have
an inch or two of work hanging over me, but that hasn't stopped me from
being completely lazy over the past week or more. The other day I
woke up and put on my robe until I took a shower early in the evening;
at that point I finally got dressed by putting on my pajamas.
I really came here to write because I wanted
to tell you one thing: that Google will almost always find someone who's
thinking what you're thinking, even if you don't believe what you're
thinking. I started thinking about Jim Davis, the creator of
Garfield, and his method of having a staff and committee to create the
strip rather than doing it himself, like Schulz did. And the
phrase "Jim Davis is a tool" came into my head (even though I don't
believe he is). I put the phrase in Google and "Jim Davis Is a
Tool" was the title of someone's blog post. Now if someone else
does that search, they'll find this page too.
I'll be right back. I'm going to write
"Dolly Parton is an asshole" into Google.
Well, there you go. One misguided soul
wrote (in his blog, of course) "Is it okay that I think Dolly Parton is
an asshole?" Yes, it is wrong. Taste is one thing, but
thinking Dolly Parton is an asshole is a sign of psychological
imbalance.
Anyway, there it was.
I have a few low-impact projects I'm doing.
"Projects" in this case really just means doing anything more active
than watching movies with Carrie or Doctor Who (by myself).
Like playing Riven, the sequel to Myst (which I just completed). I
only like old games. Now that Grand Theft Auto IV is out, I'm
thinking of picking up part three. I'm still doing the Bible
Stories. (I even did a "Carrie" comic.) I've been
very slowly working on the DVD for Rusty Spell's Videoland.
At one point I thought I had finished. I burned the DVD and
everything, then -- while watching it -- realized I needed to put in one
more thing. That one more thing is taking me a while. Not to
do, but to get to. I'm also working on a new web page about
grammar, which is more fun than it should be.
One more Google search before I go.
How about "I used to worship Morton Downey, Jr."?
No. I lose.
It's Really Simple
(4-19-08) I always find myself talking about Godstuff on this part
of my web site, but where else am I going to do it: Noby and Rusty's
Games? This writing is prompted by Bill Maher (the guy on TV I
agree with more than anyone, by the way) being baffled by otherwise
intelligent people who believe in "talking snakes." The assumption
here is that if you believe in God, you believe in talking snakes and
other weird things in the Bible. Yes, if you believe in talking
snakes, you shouldn't expect people to take you seriously.
However, if you feel that believing in God means that you have to also
believe in talking snakes, then you're just as misguided.
The problem with both camps is that they
don't know how to handle images. Everyone knows what it means to
have your heart broken. We can read in a book that someone has had
their heart broken and we can believe that: everyone can.
However, we don't believe that someone literally has a
blood-pumping organ that has suddenly become cracked in two. Nor
do we make fun of people for describing their painful emotions this way
as silly or unintelligent. It's an image, and we understand what
it means. In fact, there aren't many better (or quicker) ways to
describe having a "broken heart." Try to describe anything
abstract or emotional and you tend to turn to images for explanations.
(Even my saying "turn to" in the previous sentence is an image.)
So the writers of Genesis, in attempting to
describe God (who, if he exists, would be more complicated than emotions
or any abstraction we could think of), also uses images to do so.
The idea of a talking snake is less silly than the idea of a heart
hardened and shattered like a vase, if you compare the two. The
image of a burning bush is far less ridiculous than calling someone a
piece of shit and meaning it. The only difference is that we
immediately know what "broken heart" and "piece of shit" means. We
don't immediately know what the talking snake or the burning bush means
(because the images are more complicated) and so we are tempted to (a)
dismiss them as being silly or (b) believe that they are real. And
both are stupid options.
C.S. Lewis puts it this way: "If [you]
cannot understand books written for grown-ups, [you] should not talk
about them." If you can't get past the temptation to literalize
fantastic images in holy books or any book -- whether you're an
atheist or a fundamentalist -- you're not a good reader and you're not
qualified to have an opinion about it one way or the other.
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