Day of the Sun (which is kind of ironic, it also being Mother's Day, but then, that would be 'son', not 'sun', so never mind) May 9 2003

It seems I'm not going to get any sleep tonight (I've managed to screw my sleep schedule up royally over the last three weeks of having no set daily routine) so I may as well blog. What I'll blog I really don't know, but, well, here it be.

After several days of high email volume, mostly due to this pleasant Aussie named Jonathan who wrote me out of the blue last week to praise some of my articles, and who has since offered to run a lot of my fiction and other stuff in his e-zine THRILLING MYSTERIES IN SPACE, today slacked off considerably. It seems no one has anything new to add to any of the articles that have been up on this page for the past few days, either. So I'm jonesing for attention once more (and sugar, too, and I sure wouldn't mind a little folding money, and, well, as long as we're listing shit, sex with someone I'm attracted to would be good, and a winning Lotto ticket would not go astray down here, and, gee, if you want to throw some true love in there, o Jebus, ain't nobody currently residing in this apartment gonna bitch much), but what the hell, I'll get over it... no need to yell at me for it, Emma.

I did get some email from the lovely and brilliant Elayne Riggs, introducing me to her 'local' buddy Jed Martinez. (Jed lives somewhere other than Tampa, but he is in Florida, and in a New York State Of Mind, I guess that's 'local' enough.) So I sent Jed an email, and he sent one back. He's been kind enough to offer me some cogent tips on job hunting, and they are so astonishing and brilliant and insightful and innovative I wanted to share them with all of you:

It's not that I don't appreciate Jed taking the time to type all this out for me; I know his heart's in the right place and, well, he's just a soul who's intentions are good... O Lord, please don't let him be misunderstood. And in fact, I haven't misunderstood him, any more than I would have in some way not comprehended his suggestions if he had instructed me, upon heading out to the pool, to be sure to wear shorts or other brief clothing suitable for swimming, and to be sure to take a towel along, because when you go in swimming, you generally get wet all over.

Okay, let's move on from that.

I very nearly ruined Minute Rice tonight. I know, it's hard to imagine, but I'm just that bad a cook. I tossed in some frozen broccoli and some Onion Gravy mix, and apparently that upset the water to rice ratio, so I had to add more water, and that turned out to be too much, so my weird rice casserole thing is much soggier than it should be. However, it's still edible, so I'm eddin' it.

Yeah, really, that's about as exciting as it gets here, folks.

I was kinda hoping I might get the Unnamable Website Paycheck in Saturday's mail, but no such luck. Maybe tomorrow. And tomorrow, of course, is the day I get to register for Unemployment again (and hope I can remember my PIN number), which should, if all goes well, see a check being mailed to me on Tuesday, so, hopefully, by Friday at the latest, I'll have some money.

Meantime, I'll be eating Minute Rice and plain spaghetti and PB&J sandwiches, and hoping my soap, shampoo, and toilet paper last until I get another influx of cash.

You know, now would be a great time for an ex girlfriend, or old friend, or some relative I haven't seen in a while, to blow into town and decide to take me out to dinner. This happens damned near every week to somebody on Friends (and all their old friends look like slumming movie actors, too). Where are all my old college buddies when I need them? (I know, I know... all my old college buddies loathe me. It's the price you pay when you're this damned good looking. ::sigh::)

Hey, look. I know it was probably out of line to make fun of ol' Jed's earnest and well intentioned advice in public (as public as a blog read by maybe ten people is, anyway). And I know if Elayne reads this she's going to be pissed off at me, and if I were in Jed's shoes I'd be annoyed if I offered someone some help and they turned around and tried to publicly humiliate me over it. All I can say to those very truthful observations is, well, (1) this is my blog and I try to be honest and honestly, Jed's advice was, well, worth poking some fun at, and (2) if I'd ever written someone and offered them job hunting insights like 'put all your past work experience on your resume', I like to think I'd just shake my head and accept any pummeling I got over it as deserved.

I mean, seriously. You're going to hand me material like that and I'm just supposed to stand here and be quiet about it? Oh, please.

ONLY WE CAN DO THAT TO OUR PLEDGES

I normally leave the political stuff alone, because there are so many people out there who do it so much better than I do. But I have to mention how amused I am at the current Republican initiative to change the Senate's rules of procedure to allow a gradually decreasing majority to override a filibuster.

See, as things stand now, to get to cloture... i.e., to override a filibuster... the Senate needs 60 votes. With 51 Republican Senators and 49 Democratic Senators, any time things are sharply divided on party lines, there's no way the Senate is going to get those 60 votes. This means that lately, the Dems have been very effectively stalling the confirmations of Dubya's judicial appointees (all of whom, from what I've read, are really scary people I personally wouldn't want working as dogcatcher in my particular neighborhood, much less sitting on a Federal bench somewhere) with filibusters, and the Republicans can't override them. This annoys the Repubs no end, of course, because if they could just get the confirmation hearings to an actual vote, Bush's insane nutjob appointees would slide through 51 to 49, and then there they'd be, sitting on the Federal bench for life, where they could do everything in their power to make sure that civil liberties and Constitutional rights are only enjoyed by good, decent, proper, right thinking Americans, who won't abuse their freedom of expression by questioning Christianity or our sacred Government, or abuse their right of privacy by having sex with someone of the same gender as them, or their right of free association and assembly by organizing a goddam atheist's society.

See, what the Repubs are currently trying to float is a modification to the rules, so that only the first vote to overrule a filibuster needs 60 votes. Then each succeeding vote would require fewer votes... 57, then 55... until, eventually, it gets down to a simple majority, and those really annoying Democrats won't be able to filibuster any more, and we can get this show on the road... the road to a God fearing fundamentalist Christian theocracy where every citizen is absolutely free to do whatever they please at any given time, as long as whatever they please doesn't offend Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, or Jerry Falwell.

What amuses me most about this... well, there are so many things that amuse me about it. One is contemplating just how long these new rules would last if somehow the Repubs managed to pass them, and then, at the next election, the Dems regained a majority. How quickly do you think the new Republican Minority Leader would jump up on his or her feet and DEMAND that those revisions be expunged immediately, and the original glorious traditions of the Senate be restored?

But the most amusing thing is that the Dems are going to keep this proposed rule change from ever coming to a vote... by filibustering it. And to overcome a filibuster blocking a procedural change, you need 67 votes. Heh heh.

NOT IN THE BUFF

I want to hold off on really lengthy comments on Buffy until the season (and series) comes to a close in a couple more weeks. But I just had to say here... never in my life have I seen more people have sex while fully clothed (some of them in bed and under mostly concealing blankets, too) than I have on the last episode of BTVS.

Now, I know that there's give and take; any time you want to show something even remotely 'adult' in an 8 p.m. time slot, you have to give a little... and I also know that the network nearly had a collective corporate aneurysm when Willow first kissed Tara on the lips back in the 5th Season, so the incredibly intense make out scenes (prominently featuring Kennedy's heretofor unnoticed tongue stud) between Willow and her latest same-sex paramour were going to have to be visually bowdlerized somehow.

But holy mother o' god! Xander and Anya are getting skippy on the kitchen floor... fully clothed. Faith and Mr. Principal are rolling around rutting like crazed weasels in Buffy's bed... fully clothed. (Okay, Faith was in a bra. But I'm here to tell you, I may not ever get laid again in this life, but I have been there and done that a few hundred times at least back when I was still moderately attractive, and there is NOTHING more aggravating than a bra when you're trying to do the dirty deed with a willing and eager partner... a bra, by itself, is far more uncomfortable to both partners involved than a bra under at least one outer garment, because you're thinking the whole time, 'okay, we ditched the damned blouse, now can we please get rid of this scratchy stiff cotton thing with the wires and the clasps?')

Upstairs, Kennedy is all over Willow, but... hands outside the tank top, please... like if I had Alyson Hannigan flat on a mattress, back arched in uncontrolled libidinous pleasure, moaning her adorable and sexy little head off, she'd be wearing anything except a coating of my various bodily fluids... but for God's sake, if for some reason she really wants to keep that top on, my hands would certainly not be on my side of it while I was running my neatly bisected tongue up and down the underside of her pretty little chin.

Now, off in some other house, it made perfect sense that Buffy and Spike stayed clothed, since they weren't having sex, they were just doing the 'hold me' thing, and that's kind of nice, and a good, character defining moment for them, given the way they've tended to interact on a mattress (or a carpet, or in a fresh grave) prior to this.

But everybody else seriously needs to learn how to work a zipper and a snap, and if the Fonz wanted to lounge on by and give Xander, Kennedy, and Principal Wood a quick lesson in the function of the bra clasp, it appears such instruction would not fall on deaf ears in the Summers household.

I mean, come ON now. This is just silly.

Also, I want to protest on Dawn's behalf. I was 16 once and I know what the libido is like. Furthermore, everyone else in the house was getting laid, she and Andrew had been making cow eyes at each other for weeks now, and he's obviously not going to survive the season... and Buffy, Xander, and Willow were all indulging in sexual behavior back when they were 16, right there on the small screen in front of my staring eyes. It seems deeply unfair that just because Michelle Trachtenberg looks more convincingly adolescent than the older crew ever did, she doesn't get to steam up a camera lens like they did. In fact, other than sucking face with a vampire (er... no pun intended, that just happened) early last season, Dawn's been pretty much a nun. It's tough to be a living energy being when you're sister's the Slayer, I guess.

Beyond that, I'm just going to say, if they really blew up Faith, I'm gonna be so pissed off at the world, you don't even want to know.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I’m not a likable guy. I’m not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It’s simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don’t like my opinions or my blog, don’t read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I’m not going to say that this time around, because I’ve realized that what this is basically saying is, ‘if you don’t like what I have to say, tough, I don’t want to hear it, don’t even bother to tell me, just go away’.

And that’s actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country… for a little while longer, anyway… and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I’m not sure that’s a right when you’re doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don’t feel like reading… and I’m really quick with the delete key… as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don’t like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance… these things are only worth my time and attention if they’re entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough with, style, and/or panache to amuse me… try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.

Like it? Hate it? Hit me with your best shot.

NOTICE

There is such a thing as a social contract. Even among bloggers. And I pay attention to it.