Song of the Fat Lady

Those Wal-Mart people were back today at the corner of Burnet and Anderson carrying their red signs in their red shirts, the same faces I didn’t recognize before. I had to wonder if one of them was the “You don’t know me” person on the phone who warned that “I know where you live, so watch your back, bitch.”

I also had to wonder whether any of them watch TV or read a newspaper. In case they haven’t heard, the project has full approval and is moving forward in accord with local law.

It’s kind of like George Bush on TV saying that no one had any idea how bad things were in New Orleans. I don’t even have cable, but I knew. Don’t they at least get CNN at the White House? Do we need a special fund to provide the commander in chief with common knowledge?

I’m getting off-point, though. Deep breath. Moment of pause. Visualize. Re-center. Focus.

OK. I’m better.

I’m not sure why those Wal-Mart people were up there protesting a commercial development that’s already been approved. The planning commission and city council had no legal grounds to deny the permit. What do they expect to gain at this point? They fought, they lost.

Isn’t it time to go home? Hasn’t the fat lady sang loud enough yet?

Unfortunately for us all, Beverly Sills is no longer available. I wonder if they’d listen to Leontine Price. . .

Just a thought.

Breathe deep. Focus. Center. Meditate on fresh tomatoes, rosemary and oregano cooked lightly in olive oil with some garlic, basil and onion, poured onto angel hair pasta, topped with freshly grated parmesan and little balls of baby mozzarella tossed in. Salt and pepper to taste.

There. That wasn’t so bad.

With mouthy opinion you get recipe.

Any questions?

The End of the World (as We Know It)

While I sympathize with the organizers of the Earth Live concerts and support their efforts to make the world a better place that doesn’t eventually kill us all, I think they underestimate the power of Earth. All of civilization is but a blip in the life of the planet. It was here before we were, and it will be here when we’re gone.

Maybe they should talk about saving Western civilization as we know it, because that’s really what it’s all about. Dinosaurs were around a lot longer than Western civilization has been, and they died out. That, or morphed into the reptiles and birds we know today. Still, the planet remained and quietly bred our ancestors in its own time.

There is every likelihood that we will go the way of the dinosaurs at some point. Homo sapien certainly doesn’t have an exemption to long-term biological change (a.k.a. evolution). Regardless of what happens with global warming, if we survive, we won’t be the same people we were a million years ago.

The biggest threat that global warming poses isn’t to the planet: it’s to social and economic structures that constitute the foundation of our Western culture. Too many natural disasters, whether they be flood or drought, that the government cannot respond to will cause civil unrest. Irregular weather patterns that disrupt commerce will cause economic unrest. Businesses will fail, people will hoard emergency supplies and ammunition, the rule of law will begin to break down as one problem after another slowly erodes the glue of society.

That’s the real threat of global warming. And it’s the one that all the celebrity do-gooders aren’t talking about.

And as Lady Paris has taught us, celebrity status is not an indicator of insight or good judgment. If anything, it seems to make the shallow bowl an even shallower plate.

And it’s not that I question the celebrities’ motivations. I’m sure that most are quite pure.

But they’ve missed the big picture.

To get the masses behind finding a resolution to global warming, or even a half-assed way to address the issue, the message needs to framed differently than the old hippies and young neo-hippies are doing it. They’re mostly talking in abstract terms that don’t have very much impact.

They need to talk about how much money a person can save by using the little screw-in fluorescent bulbs. I spent $40 on some, and our electric bill dropped by more than $40 in the first month. I didn’t do it out of love for Mother Earth, because she’ll be here long after I’m gone. I did it for love of green pieces of paper in my wallet that could be used to do things other than light our apartment.

Don’t tell folks that sea levels will rise, because most of them don’t live close to a sea. It’s their problem for living within a few feet of sea level. Not enough people will care.

Instead, talk about the upheaval in daily life that will accompany the eventual breakdown of civic institutions that can no longer respond to an endless string of death and disaster. Tell them about saving money now.

Talk in real terms, not in glam-speak. We don’t need any more psuedointellectual pop stars and actors with good intentions but no perspective.

Re-brand, re-market, re-something. Just get down off that luxury soap box and talk about real issues. And if you can’t talk about real issues, then just shut up.

All that hot air can’t be good for the ozone layer.

Faith Based

I have long harbored a distaste for Michael Moore, whose new film “Sicko” is causing much the same uproar as his earlier releases, but until today, I’ve never been able to quantify my dislike of him. Until now, he's been like the sand you don't mean to get into your drawers at the beach. That little piece of popcorn husk stuck in your teeth. That odd smell you can't quite place until you realize it's been too long since you cleaned out the fridge.

Well, I found the source of that offensive smell, itch and irritation. And it ain't the fridge that stinks.

It isn’t so much the buffoonish way he approaches issues of such gravitas, although I do find that disrespectful and offensive on some level. It isn’t his reliance on cheap tricks, like show-boating in front of the camera when people refuse to talk to him, or shouting through a bull-horn off the coast of Cuba. It’s not even his smug, smart-ass attitude that pervades the far-left and right equally.

It’s his sloppiness. Not in dress, but in thought (although he really should rethink his wardrobe--God does make things besides sloppy T-shirts and khakis that obviously haven't seen a dry-cleaner in years).

I listened to a conversation this morning between Slate’s Dana Stevenson and Timothy Noah (listen here: http://www.slate.com/id/2169131/nav/tap1/) that clarified my own negative reaction to the man. They both pointed to what could be called the delineation of a set of problems or circumstances with no attempt to look at them intellectually. Ms. Stevenson even opined that the latest film’s logic would not have stood up in her high school debate club.

That’s when I had my epiphany: Moore does not come from a position of logic so much as belief. Like empty-headed extremists on both sides of both parties, he believes he is right and doesn’t feel the need to prove it.

To him it’s as self-evident the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were to Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams. He doesn’t feel the need to explicate or intellectually develop any argument for injustice the way that the framers of the Declaration of Independence so agonizingly did.

The whole issue has also helped me clarify my distaste for the so-called political intelligencia in Austin, TX, the city where I have chosen to make my home. I moved here in part because of its liberal reputation and have lived happily as an openly gay man for over 15 years. I enjoy the freedom of liberalism, but I cannot respect a large part of self-identified liberals here who, among other things, blindly hold corporate America responsible for all our country’s ills, from poverty to corruption in government to war.

There are many more causes for poverty, corruption and general governmental evil than they can fathom.

It’s their starting point for opinion, and not their conclusion. If you start any line of reasoning with “Given that corporations are responsible for the downfall of our nation”, just imagine where you can end up.

The end result of such shallow thinking: anywhere you want, and still be able to be smugly assured that your opinion is intelligent because the other side just didn’t know where to start.

They seem to think they have a special dispensation of knowledge that needn’t be questioned because, well, it’s self-evident. It makes it so much easier to condemn everyone who disagrees with them, because they are obviously ignorant.

I abhor the politics of condemnation, especially when it it so obviously insincere.

As a country, we have have more in common individuals that we have different. Most of our values are the same, even though they might vary slightly.

We want the same thing: the right to be left the hell alone and pursue our lives in a legal manner without having someone looking over our shoulder or telling us which consenting adult we can or cannot have sex with.

They're just fundamental rights. That should be self-evident in the greatest country the world has ever known.

My right to dissent is guaranteed by the constitution, but that is not as self-evident as it used to be.

I love my country, and always will.

It is the greatest country that God has ever put on the Earth. It's the end result of blood shed that I don't think any of us today could imagine. Hundreds of thousands dead in the South in the Civil War. That doesn't count the number of Union Army dead.

It's both staggering and humbling to thing that we're still a nation after all that.

There are still a few of us true intellectuals out there, trying our best to differentiate between liberal and intelligent and who condemn grand-standing and show-boating as a valid part of the political process. A list of facts and/or opinions isn’t an argument. Unless the glue of reason holds them together and connects them in a logical chain, they are just a list of facts and/or opinions that carry with them not a shred of credibility and are in no way whatsoever constructive.

As a people, we seem to be immune to the politics of destruction, regardless of which side is the destroyer, and they’re both equally guilty. We’ve replaced substance with slogans in an almost Orwellian way. We don’t think, because other people offer to do it for us. We simply follow like sheep whomever we think shares our beliefs, never once rising to the task of sorting things out in our own minds for ourselves.

That is why Michael Moore and Austin liberals annoy me so much: they want to make a lot of noise but not bother with the hard work of proving their points. They want to start with what they see as self-evident truths. But they have abdicated their responsibilities as citizens in many ways by not exposing their beliefs to the light of reason.

As I said earlier, extremists on both sides of both parties are guilty as sin on these counts.

Close your eyes and imagine the world we would live in if our founding fathers had not agonized over their argument for independence. They started with simple ideas that were self-evident and went on to explicate them in such a brilliant manner that they were hard to argue with. They framed their position tersely and elegantly, with no grand-standing or show-boating. They had a point to make, and they made it.

Then they went off to lead a revolution.

Now, those are some folks I could get behind.

Mr. Pinto

Little Miss isn’t happy tonight. She can’t go out because of the aforementioned threat. Chances are it was a hollow threat by a coward who will never act on anything. But I’ve never been one to gamble. She’ll stay in as long as I think necessary.

She may think she’s the boss, but she ain’t.

Being all paternal about her has brought Mr. Pinto to mind. He was our 18 year old cat that died in February. He was a gem.

Shannon says that someone dropped him over the fence when he was about 6 months old. They became fast friends. Pinto rode in the saddle bags of his motorcycle to carpentry job sites. He would sit off to the side, never fazed by the noise or chaos that those kind of sites produce.

In his later years, Mr. Pinto fell in love with our black leather sofa. He rarely got off of it. Just enough to eat and go to the litter box. He stopped going outside and started looking ragged.

Mr. Pinto was running down.

One day, he was doing worse than normal, so Shannon took him to the vet. The vet wanted to put him down, but Shannon said “No”. He called me at work, and I told him that he had done the right thing.

The vet said Pinto wasn’t in any pain, but his kidneys were failing.

The thought of Pinto being euthenized in a cold, sterile room by someone he did not know screamed to me one response: “NO!!!”

They gave him some shots, and he lived another week in no apparent pain. He seemed happy to have a reprieve, and even ventured outside a bit.

On a Monday morning in February, he crawled off into our closet to die. Shannon found him there, and brought him out. I put him on his favorite pillow on his favorite couch in his preferred corner of his favorite couch.

He passed from us about 2 pm that day.

The only comfort I can take is that he died where he was happy.

Mr. Pinto had a good run, and he was well-loved.

I’m not sure what better obituary, belated that it is, could end as well.

I’ll see you on the other side, old man.

Until then, don't get too attached to anyone. We'll be there soon enough. I may have another husband in tow, but he'll like you, too.

He was a redhead, just like you.