“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was repealed last week but not really. There are a thousand arguments against this soft ban on homosexuals in the military, many of them concerning high-minded issues about equality and liberty, many of them concerning more practical issues about keeping a staffed and battle-ready military in a time of decade-long war. I agree with just about any argument against this policy, up to and including, “Repealing it will piss off homophobic idiots.” 

But let’s examine this issue from a different angle, one that isn’t focused on homosexual equality per se, but more on the basic structure of American society, and how I believe it could, if we don’t pay attention, turn dangerously militaristic. The last 60 years or so have been an experiment in maintaining global military supremacy with a civilian government and a volunteer force. The way forward, until now, has been through sheer economic superiority and the decision to leverage that by outspending the world at large on military research and arms. As we enter a period in which American economic superiority will be challenged, this method of keeping up military might without becoming a military nation will also be challenged.

Fear #1: The notion of civilian control is eroding. Barack Obama has been somersaulting on this issue. I don’t know the man personally, but I sense that he’s conflicted on three levels: 1) he wants to end DADT for political reasons; 2) he’s ambivalent about DADT for personal, perhaps religious reasons; 3) he’s apparently incapable of ending DADT for military reasons. At least, that’s his argument. But we have kept this democracy strong and alive by severely limiting the military’s on-paper power in government. While there’s no doubt that the military is a singularly powerful force in Washington politics, there is no official standing for it to make decisions about the rule of law, the enforcement of law, or the diplomatic policies of our nation. These powers belong to a civilian Congress and a civilian President, with a civilian judiciary to rein in excesses. What does it mean for a Commander-in-Chief to be unable to end a military policy? What does it imply about his ability to dictate decisions on the battlefield, or even where the battlefield should be? If Mr. Obama cannot say “stop discharging soldiers for being gay,” can he say “stop fighting this or war” or “no, I don’t want to fight that new war”? Obviously, he must defer to the training and judgement of senior officers in terms of actual battlefield execution and soldier movements, but shouldn’t he be able to make the biggest decisions from his desk? Isn’t that desk, as one he was voted to sit behind, the safest place to put such momentous decisions?

If the military is blocking the repeal of DADT, doesn’t that amount to a coup?

Fear #2: The continuing existence of DADT infantilizes an already infantile nation. Cynics have been arguing for years that the American people have been dumbed into sheephood by an idiotic mass media and a condescending body politic. I try to keep an optimistic view of these things; if you know where to look, there are plenty of conduits for intelligent engagement between policy-makers and everyday citizens, and maybe it’s okay that a vast majority of any given population doesn’t have the time, education, or inclination to give a crap about politics. Asking every citizen to be fully engaged in politics is akin to asking every citizen to be fully engaged in baseball. You either enjoy it and find it important or you don’t. The ability to not find politics enjoyable or important is one of the freedoms we are allowed to have.

However, there are instances in which policy is crafted specifically to mollify the unengaged electorate, and I find those instances horrifying. DADT is one of them. When Clinton put this policy in place, he was asking us to believe that before the policy, there were no gay servicemembers, and that after the policy, there might be gay servicemembers, but there shouldn’t be any. The very name, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” sounds like libertarian compromise but translates into a peculiar bigotry, one that designates some soldiers as inferior then asks them to pretend they are not … when they are not inferior to begin with. Homosexuals are asked to wear a mask of heterosexuality. Imagine a World War II in which African-Americans were asked to service in white face paint. “Don’t Wash, Don’t Show.” 

Secondly, Americans were being told that homosexuality is, in fact, a compromising force in military service. Somehow, a sexual orientation being present in the barracks and on the battlefield would “weaken morale” in ways that being shot at and watching friends get blown up couldn’t accomplish. Americans were told that our soldiers were, indeed, backward uneducated bigots who would commit desertion at proximity to a member of the same sex who felt and thought differently than them. We were told that the vast majority of our soldiers are idiots.

Of course, that’s not what we’re always told. What we’re always told is that our soldiers are the bravest, toughest, highest-minded members of our society, and that we should celebrate their every sacrifice as the noblest of human endeavors.

I believe this duality is a result of the volunteer policy that came into play after Vietnam. Now that the military experience is an exceptional one instead of a commonplace one, the unengaged electorate is imprintable about what soldiering is about. A marketing message can be put forth, one that cheers soldiers on as “those other people who do things” while also recruiting with lines like “wouldn’t you want to be a hero?” In World War II (and, to a lesser extent, Korea and Vietnam), being in the military was a common passage of life: a majority of men served. It was hard to float marketing messages about the glory and the nobility of military life when three of your neighbors served and could give you, in detail, the scoop about military life over a barbecue. 

Witness the disappearance of military comedies, which used to be commonplace, from mass culture. That says a lot about how connected the general populace is to the military experience.

I have no military experience, and neither does anyone in my immediate family. But I have known dozens of people who have served, in all branches, currently and formerly, and they all have a few things in common:

1) They are smart. I have yet to meet a soldier who wasn’t well-educated, deeply contemplative, or both. They are also all ambitious men and women, which usually is a sign of deep intelligence and extreme capability.

2) They know the military is flawed. Maybe I haven’t been inside the military as deeply as I should, but I can say that the “yessir everything we do is right and good” soldier appears to be a myth. Soldiers are as critical as anyone else.

3) They are diverse. I won’t sit down and do the statistics, but if you want to make a checklist of every minority in America, I have met at least one current or former servicemember from each one. (This, yes, includes gays and lesbians.) I also know a few white suburbanites. In fact, two of my three neighbors growing up are currently serving in the Army and Air Force.

Put these three facts together, and the suggestion that soldiers are incapable of handling the full diversity of the human experience is ludicrous. Worse, it’s degrading. DADT is one of those failed policies that manages to degrade both the constituency that it’s attempting to degrade and the rest of the population at large.

Soldiers, on the whole, can handle gayness. To suggest otherwise is frankly un-American. To suggest that the soldier who can’t handle gayness would desert or otherwise subvert our military goals is to profoundly misunderstand the nature of our armed forces. The soldiers I know would rather fulfill an unpleasant order than turn their backs because a fellow troop thinks a different flavor of dirty thoughts at night in the barracks.

Fear #3: DADT will be a political conduit for backlash against gay marriage. There is a pattern in the history of American civil rights that the courts push forward a more open future (based on the fucking Constitution, of course, lest we forget where all these notions of equality come from), then the noisy minority electorate wedges some legislators into the works to somehow repeal or roll back those rights. The cultural war on gay marriage is being fought, as it should be, in the states. It’s hard for the country as a whole to dictate the positions of every single state, so this type of progress is less prone to minority wedge politics. (Not that it hasn’t stopped the good people of Utah from interfering in California, but that’s another topic.) 

A presidential policy in regards to the military, though, is a different matter. Obama’s move on this one will also move votes. Not in the sense that those “for” Obama will suddenly be “against” him - those columns seem more secure than ever. In the sense that those “against” him will be urged to vote that way, while those “for” him will consider their position accomplished and perhaps stay home to watch The Daily Show.

Obama is governing on the timetable of 8 years because that’s what he believes his reforms and policies will take. Sometimes, I wish he (and all politicians) would govern like there is no next election, no mid-term election, no campaign strategizing at all. I wish there were a way to legislate that legislators legislate the beliefs that got them elected. But that’s like wishing for honesty in politics, or unicorns in my backyard.

So, with DADT, we have a policy that doesn’t accomplish anything positive and that’s visibly thinning the ranks of a volunteer military during a time of war, and a president who won’t end it even though he has vowed, repeatedly, that he will, because of a phantom notion that some people will … do … something … if it goes away.

If there are any extreme homophobes serving our country right now, and if they indeed are inclined to commit violence against their fellow servicemembers because they are gay, or if they are inclined to break ranks over the open inclusion of the random 5% of the population that already exists whether they like it or not, then I propose that these extreme homophobes are terrorists.

The threat of their violence and destruction is panicking the electorate, shaping the debate of Congress in a fractious manner, and hamstringing the President from carrying out his sworn duty as Commander-in-Chief. Aren’t these the consequences we fear of successful terrorism? 

Politics and timing and due process of order be damned. Let’s all grow up, take a deep breath, drop the fear, and get rid of a juvenile policy once and for all.

My life is fairly simple. I wake up, put on clothes that would be suitable for church (adjusting the tie as necessary), drive while listening to a podcast that describes some comedian’s torturous rise to fame, sit at a desk and click a mouse button, eat a healthy lunch, sit at a desk and click a mouse button, then drive home (finishing off the podcast as I go) and arrive just before sunset to look into my wife’s eyes and ask her how my day should begin. And we begin it. And it is good.

Work — real work, as opposed to the sort of job one takes because it is fun or interesting — occupies this disproportionate chunk of one’s day. Like sleep, it adds up. Unlike sleep, the minutes are acutely present, marching in circles like an anthill death spiral. It’s the kind of thing a person complains about, if that person is daft enough to forget that sitting around and clicking buttons while raking in thousands of American dollars is not something worth complaint. Work is stressful; work is easy. Work is the time we donate to others, uncharitably, so that we may find a measure of joy in the remaining time that is rationed to us. Work is whatever you don’t want to do. Work is whatever they want you to do. Work is a negotiation between life and death.

On Tuesday, after work, V and I attended yet another Meetup in the cavalcade of Meetups. This one was for beer lovers, though, so it wasn’t like I was dragged by the nostril hairs. There was some special for a beer called the Thirsty Goat Ale. Every pint came with a glass that could be taken home. We made sure to collect a full set.

In the process, as will sometimes happen by happenstance at a networking event, we met some delightful people from all over the country who have relocated to Austin on the rumor that there’s gold (and happiness) in these here hills. As fellow gold (happiness) rushers, we struck up the usual conversations about neighborhoods and culture and low real estate prices. The last item I always feel slightly guilty about, since my enthusiasm comes at the expense of long-time residents who used to really have it cheap before the rest of us suckers flooded in and believed that rates twice as high were still a bargain. Then again, no sympathy. I lived through the Great Denver Growth Spurt. I’ve seen the aftermath that is still bringing economic renewal (in the depths of a “don’t call it a depression” recession!) to blighted neighborhoods. Austin will change, but it will thrive. Complaining about an influx of new money to the city would be like complaining about a job that requires button clicking.

At about the second beer, I started to feel funny again. Not funny-oh-crap-having-another-stroke, but funny-ha-ha-maybe-I-should-give-stand-up-another-chance. What is this itch? I’ve been talking myself into and out of it on a constant roller coaster basis for weeks. Listening to podcasts about comedic careers isn’t helping, but also it is, but also it isn’t. Maybe it’s the non-creative nature of my work (something I haven’t had to contend with for six or seven years), or maybe this is the early onset of midlife crisising, but something is drawing me to the stage, and for some reason the thing I’m compelled to do once up there is tell lame jokes until I’m booed into a corner.

Typical of most of my fantasies, I imagine the entire experience (usually positively) while in the shower. It’s wordless. I mean, I picture myself saying words, with a certain sound and a certain rhythm, and the crowd laughs, but I never imagine the words. I never write the damn show that plays in my head. This was my problem when pursuing fiction as well. I had the rhythm and the idea in place, but the details of, you know, the words … never quite happened the way I’d imagine. Everything always popped out as an absurd sheen of language, like I was lacquering over the real idea for fear that it might be dull or obvious or mediocre or boring even to myself. 

Do you ever get bored of yourself, diary? Do you ever bury your nose so deeply into navel-gazing and self-analysis that you figure your own joke out, explain it to yourself, and no longer find it funny? The answer I haven’t heard yet, in all these podcasts, and the answer I desperately want to know from professional, successful comedians is: what’s the secret to a straight face? Because if it’s repeating your own wit to yourself until it’s no longer funny, I think I’m doing it wrong. I think I’m destroying whatever spark of confidence and joy I have until doubt crushes my sense of humor and I’m left with a pathetic diatribe of half-assed philosophy instead of comedy.

Then again, most comedians come across as pretty fucked up. I might be doing this right. I might be doing this soon. I might. After a few beers.

More than anything, before I die, I’d like to create an idea that takes root and passes through society. I want to be a virus when I grow up.

This isn’t as hard as it used to be, with a technology built seemingly for the sole purpose of spreading ideas quickly as the central medium of our age, and a culture that is in the throes of meme gluttony. And it’s also a dangerous occupation to aspire to. Big Ideas sometimes fuel Evil Regimes. In fact, it’s hard to find any Evil Regime that did not, at its core, gain power through someone else’s Big Idea.

Still, even though I’ve spent most of my adult life in the belly of the media beast, I’ve yet to feel satisfaction of seeing something I thought up race around the country, or even a decent-sized city, and bounce back to me through the voice of a stranger. I want to encounter one of my ideas as an orphan on the streets, begging for tuppence. I want to see a bastardized, telephoned, garbled transmission with recognizable roots in my own bean. 

I suppose I’ll settle for fatherhood. 

Sometimes I wonder (back on this narcissistic desire that’s one whisker shy of fame whoring) how many of my ideas have rattled around amongst strangers only to slip away into nothingness, how many were just poorly played pinballs that took a bad bounce off the broken left flipper. 

If andor when I do succeed —

— quick sidebar: I once had a blog on which I tried to promote the need for and/or to become a single word, andor, that would join the hallowed list of conjunctions in English —

— I  wonder if I’ll be big enough to let the idea come to rest before me in all its unattributed glory, maybe even with a wink, and not comment. There’s a koan-like quality to the practice of letting go of writing that any cub reporter learns on day one, when that first editor takes that first red pen (oh, who am I kidding, that first blinking cursor) to your piece and makes it something else before the public is allowed to see it. But it’s a quantum leap from that to the ability to let an idea live and breathe by itself, without asserting ownership and smothering it with helicopter mom love.

America has fallen in love with its own ideas. Fitting to talk about this on Columbus Day. Not because we still have a Columbus Day, but because the only tenor in which it’s mentioned is in a passing dismissal with occasional elaboration on the white guilt we must all bear for the eventual extinguishing of Native American cultures, as though it was Christopher Columbus who led 300 years of United States expansion, at the point of a musket, from sea to shining sea. That’s the latest idea: Columbus Day is stupid because it’s a celebration of the white man taking North America. First of all, that’s one of those facile expressions of white guilt that carries seeds of white absolution in it; come on America, own up to the fact that Columbus had as much to do with the plight of Native Americans as Orville Wright did with 9/11. Second of all, yeah, dumb holiday. But third and most of all, this take on Columbus Day has gone from subversion to mainstream idea to cliche and popped through to the other side as accepted wisdom. So stop thinking you’re smart for saying it.

(I’d also like America to fall out of love with International Talk Like a Pirate Day, but those timbers just keep shivering. I guess it will finally die when Dotty, the receptionist, has a calendar at her desk with kittens saying ‘yarr’ every month.)

But I digressed horrifically. What I meant to say was that America is currently in a sick love affair with its own ideas — indeed with the idea of owning ideas — and attempting to export this idea-love as some sort of meaningful product to the rest of the world. This is all we have? Patents and copyrights? It was barely a century ago when magazines routinely ran house articles without bylines, and now we must enforce every claim to authorship so thoroughly that every company is suing every other company over it?

Just when the internet seems to be training us to donate our ideas to the common green, corporate America (a phrase I don’t use much) is working uncommonly hard to mine ideas for green. 

This thought isn’t going anywhere, really, so I’ll try to wrap it up with bullets:

• I want the world to notice one of my ideas
• I hope I just let it hang out there without insisting it’s mine
• Columbus Day shouldn’t be treated like it’s Andrew Jackson andor General Custer Day
• I’m excited to be a father? Someday?
• Dottie, the receptionist, is kind of annoying

Sunday, V and I were having brunch with a new acquaintance of hers named Aishah, and her husband, Jim. They met at a networking event — both ladies are in the nascent stages of new careers that require contacts and clients — and were sharing an encounter with a Mary Kay saleslady who was particularly aggressive. At one point, she sidled up to Aishah and asked her how long she and V had known each other. “Are you friend friends?” We all laughed at the phrase. Friendship squared, a new category of networking speak not unlike the junior high “does he like like you?” attempt create a relationship taxonomy.

Earlier, we were at church, and the sermon was about the meeting Jesus had with 10 lepers on the road to Jerusalem. (Long story short: Jesus tells them to go to the temple and they’ll be welcomed back into society, and they follow his advice, and as they’re walking they become miraculously healed. Nine of the lepers start racing to the temple in their excitement to start their lives over again. One turns back and thanks Jesus for the miracle.) Every time I’d heard this gospel sermonized, it was turned into some sort of sales pitch for the priesthood, as if religious calling were expected of 10% of the young Catholic population, like tithing. But today’s sermon was turned on the subject of gratitude, and it went beyond the “good manners” aspect of the tenth leper to ponder what it means to go out of one’s way to express gratitude for a good deed done. This kind of hit me, because — as any longtime friend of mine will attest — I’m fairly selfish with my communication, and most of my friendships die due to a lack of it.

I don’t wish to martyr myself with this one. (Did a pretty good job of that with the mom post last week.) Most people I know lose a fair percentage of friendships because they don’t keep up a phone/e-mail/Facebook correspondence. Almost all friend relationships end that way. Maybe even 9 out of 10. It’s the rare and wonderful connection that compels us to turn around on our road, look back, walk back, and chat with an old friend about all the wonderful times once had. This is why friendships can be such temporal things based in a specific time and place, and why Facebook is so deeply, profoundly weird.

Aishah — our new friend, according to the good time we had at brunch today as well as my Facebook page — said something else that stuck with me, that she skipped her high school reunion because she already knew what became of everybody and what they’re up to. This is true. My college class is having its 10th reunion this weekend, and I didn’t even consider going, even though there are some people I would desperately love to reconnect with. I wouldn’t go not only because my own curiosity feels sated (and my pocketbook couldn’t afford it, actually), but because I don’t think anyone else would go, either. Maybe Ben. He lives there. I miss Ben. And I saw a status update from Meghan that she was going. That’s cool. I liked Meghan. 

These people, most of whom I’m “friends” with on Facebook, were, at a formative part of my life, friend friends. Without Facebook, they would now be memories, and memories are something that we are drawn to rekindle, but as “friends,” they remain a quick click and chat away, and so we can safely ignore the friend friend era and allow the relationship to coast on nebulous “friend”-ship forever, or until the next Facebook comes along and we have to extend digital handshakes with everyone again. I suppose the people you forget to “friend” are the ones who were just friends and not friend friends. 

[Sidebar: ‘friend’ is one of those words that looks more and more bizarre the more you repeat it.]

Now that we’re actively disseminating wedding reception invites, I’m forced to confront all the gradients of friendship in a visceral way, passing some out to acquaintances because they happen to live nearby and it’s no big thing to have them party with us; carefully weighing mailed invitations to out-of-town friend friends to make sure we give everyone who really loves us a chance to come without puzzling those who didn’t think we were that big of a deal or haven’t talked to us in forever; dealing with relatives, whose importance is measured in blood ties even though we all have those close relatives whom we would otherwise never meet, and those thrice-removed cousins we’d be friends with in any circumstance, and all stops between. 

I find all this bewildering. Confronting and handling friendships is not a talent of mine. Until today, I was somewhat content to file that away as a piece of my personality: “Plays well with others; ignores them once they leave the room.” One of the few things that gives me true anxiety is placing a phone call to someone I used to speak with every day, but haven’t spoken to in more than a year. Of course it always goes well if I do call (or e-mail, or whatever), but holy shit, the nerves. Sometimes, I actually sweat.

This gratitude sermon, though. This gnawing sense that Facebook “friends” aren’t solving my anxiety but putting it somewhere neutral and wrong, like dust swept under a rug. I don’t think I’ll ever have the makeup to juggle hundreds of social obligations at once. I just suck at it, and I value the few close friendships I have too much to allow them to suffer in a sudden Jesus-based resolution to give more freely of my time. I just wonder if, next time I spot an opportunity to turn around on the road and go back, thank the person who put me on that path and for the revelation they gave me, if I’ll take it, no matter the inconvenience or the sweat. 

As for Facebook, I still get it. I get that it helps me push these posts out there to people who might, for one reason or another, give a fuck what goes through my head. But I also find it, as a social tool, to be this blunt instrument of passive aggression, good for personal marketing and little else. Facebook, unless we use it with creativity and panache, threatens to turn us all into weirdly pushy Mary Kay salespeople with the details of our lives.

I’m certainly not the first person to talk about its commodification of relationships (a meme that has existed since Friendster, if not before), but I hope that the imperial clothes are becoming a little more transparent to everyone. I hope we’re starting to see its blank white page as an asylum for relationships that went insane along the way. I hope we’re starting to laugh at the need for the phrase “friend friend,” an exponential description of the life that exists beyond the passed business card, the passing wave, the click of a little blue fist with a defiant thumb in the air. “I like this. And I’m hitchhiking through a social life. I hope this button gets me a few miles closer to an actual conversation with you, someday.”

Men’s wallets hold a weird fascination for women. It’s a classic flirtation or early date move for a girl to grab a guy’s wallet and rifle through it. Theoretically, this is a pretty major invasion of privacy, but I’ve never seen a guy do anything but either put up with it or enthusiastically give a tour of the contents. Smart phones, particularly iPhones, invite the same sort of browsing. What apps you got? 

So though this post may be narcissistic by definition, I figure somewhere out there, someone might find it mildly (very, very mildly) interesting to know what’s on my bookmarks bar.

• ADP. Pay statements, yo. I’m pretty anal about tracking my finances. (Being responsible with them? Not so much. But I track them like Tonto.) I don’t get physical stubs, so I have to go to this site to enter in my deductions and whatnot. Thrilling!
• Aviary Lounge. I do promotion work for them, and I built this site. I maintain it and write most of the posts and then spam the hell out of Facebook and Twitter using a Wordpress plugin. In exchange, I get a place to drink for free and the ability to show movies once a week.
• Meetup. I run the Foreign Flick Fridays at Aviary (see above) and belong to Young Austin Wine Lovers and a chat group that meets every other week to discuss New Yorker articles. 
• Twitter. Follow me @icrywolf and you’ll find out that I have no idea how to effectively monetize social media in an increasingly interconnected economy that’s all about leveraging personal brands, and I don’t care.
• Gowalla. It’s local to Austin so I try to use it instead of Foursquare and you couldn’t get me to use Facebook Places with a loaded gun. Pretty much deprecated, but if I ever want to visit my pixelated collection of latte icons, I can do it with a single click.
• Five banks I use. I can only take personal divulgence so far.
• Grocery Gadget. For a while there, V and I were all over the meal planning and careful grocery budgeting. Then, I got tired of spending 90 minutes at the grocery store to pick up one meal’s worth of items. A decent service and app but too involved for the typical working schlub.
• The B-Movie Message Board. An actual message board. I’ve frequented it for nearly a decade, but lately I’ve been swallowed by feeds and now I only pop in on occasion to read movie reviews. Still, I love its regular members like brothers (and a few sisters), and it’s an island of civility in an Internet full of 12-year-olds.
• Kongregate. Loves me some free Flash games. Keeps me from making stupid purchases I can’t afford, like an X-Box or video games that cost money or, you know, a TV. Plus, I’m a sucker for badges.
• Rotten Dead Pool. A fun yearly game in which you guess who will die. If you get more right than anyone else, you … I don’t know, actually. Doesn’t matter. Out of 10 possible picks, I’ve never had more than 2 right answers. Want to live? Allow me to predict your death. I visit often because the sidebar serves as a handy distillation of TMZ-style pop culture news without making me feel all dirty or, worse, AOL-y. 
• The Sixty-One. Wonderful music discovery service that has replaced any desire I have to visit Pandora. Plus, I think it has one of the most innovative website designs going. I’ve long since abandoned the “game” aspect of trying to get points and bump artists. Now I just browse and enjoy.
• We Are Hunted. A Billboard-style chart that highlights most-downloaded emerging artists. Comes across as a pastiche of various indie and hip-hop genres and does a better job of capturing current Top 40 zeitgeist than The Sixty-One. 
• Go Music. Just because I happen to have a Russian music downloading service linked, it doesn’t mean I circumvent any laws. I use it like an IMDB to look up what new albums are coming out. Just for that. What?
• Netflix. This really cool video renting and streaming service I belong to. You should check it out! Now fully Mac compatible!
• MLB.com. Baseball has done a fantastic job of making me not need a TV with this service. When I can afford the $10 for the streaming feeds of every game, I’m in hog heaven. 
• Yahoo! Sports. For fantasy sports purposes. 
• The Hardball Times. While Fangraphs is totally more fun and updates more frequently these days, I still keep a link to this site for old time’s sake. I published an article on realignment once. Their annual books are a must read for any sabermetrician. 
• Woot! One of these days, they’ll post an iPad for $50. Until then, I just read the daily promos for an example of great comedy writing. Seriously, these guys give The Onion a run for its money. Reminds of the late, great Girls Are Pretty heyday.
• Craigslist. For all my adult services needs. What? They what? Well, I guess I can find apartments there, too.
• Demand Studios. I do some freelancing for them when I feel like I’m dead broke, and I felt dead broke a lot when I was between jobs earlier this year. I’m not sure how I feel about the content mills, but this one pays the best, so it’s got that going for it.
• Austin Hash House Harriers. I’ve only hashed three times with them, because they run on Sunday afternoons, and I don’t know if you’ve heard this about Texas, but it gets killer hot here. One of these days, I’ll have to get back out to a full moon run, though. Jordass for Men must live on.
• Jabootu’s Bad Movie Zone. I designed this site, too, and I’ve got a half-written article for it that I really should finish one of these days. Ken Begg is one of my heroes in the b-movie criticism world, and he’s a sweet guy to boot. When I can make it to B-Fest, he’s one of the people who makes the trek to Chicago worthwhile. 
• ChrisMagyar.com. The fact that I’m blogging on Tumblr should tell you everything you need to know about this site. I always swoop in and clean off the cobwebs when I’m unemployed, then become embarrassed by its presence and let it go fallow again. Nice to have a vanity e-mail address, though. And I certainly can’t let the domain fall into the hands of evil Street Fighter Chris Magyar.

Like most guys, I try to avoid crying. I don’t know why. I cried all the time in high school, and man, it got results. Sure, I had to be the drama queen which took a lot of energy and a willingness to make people hate you, but the ability to channel strong emotions sure made it easier to bend people to your will.

Maybe it’s just the energy. I’m too tired and too old to go around crying all the time. I whine a lot, which is kind of like crying. I’m a very good complainer. But when something even starts to elicit true tears and sorrow from me, I pull up this inside wall that shuts it off and I sort of dully frown through the sadness, or scrunch my face up into cry-ready status without actually shedding tears or letting go, like someone holding their breath in anticipation of being thrown in the pool.

My mom still makes me cry. Not really, not with tears, but she still makes me find that inner dam and fight back the dark emotions that lead to crying, so that counts, I think. She’s been depressed lately, part of a long and surprisingly painful rehabilitation from back surgery. In most moms, one could write this off as the product of too much coddling in life, but she’s fought cancer twice and heart disease once, and in each case, she always found a way to bounce back emotionally before the work was finished bouncing back physically. This time, it appears, from the outside, like someone wallowing in death and finality. She’s dropped an alarming amount of weight. She sleeps more than a koala. She treats doctors and nurses and physical therapists with contempt that borders on rage. With little to no provocation, she cries, all the time.

I had a tearful phone conversation with her on Friday night, which was tough — in particular because it came after my first two beers in a month. We discussed things like how much she means to me and why I need her around, as well as more personal family dynamics, and basically I got her to break down and fully weep on the phone. Makes a man feel like shit, weeping. I vowed to write her a letter in my own handwriting on an actual piece of paper, something I have yet to do.

Last night, she called and left a voicemail. She was crying. She was telling me that she’s ready to get better now, which was very good to hear, but then, after her 30-second message, she neglected to hang up the phone, and I got two full minutes of candid distant aftermath, with her wailing and crying about “my boy, my baby” while my dad’s voice corralled my 18-month-old nephew in the background and life continued in its silence and chaos between the sobs. She’s become noisy and uncomfortable furniture in her own house. I can hardly blame my dad for letting it come to this; he has to be a saint to be handling this at all, especially since he likes crying way less than even I do. I just feel stuck — it’s like she wants me to return to the flooded, overdriven teenaged soul who would ride the emotional roller coaster with her. I’d like to, but I’ve felt some real pain in my life now and besides, who wants to turn back into the kind of person who fucks over friends and tries to commit suicide with decongestants? I’m flawed enough, thank you.

So I’m feeling this emotional distance from my sick mother who probably has to keep a bucket at her feet for all the tears. When I picture the dynamic in a restaurant or some other public place, I’m fully aware of how I’d be the asshole, no matter what conciliatory bullshit I managed to spin with my words. Is empathy for a mom really that much to ask? But how does one care for a mother? How does one return the gushing geyser of love that was given? It feels unfair, to have to hand back, even in small increments, all the unconditional support and tender sacrifice that was poured into my life throughout childhood. I need that stuff. If I give it back to her, well, she’ll have it again, but I’ll be this shell. I already feel like a shell, sometimes. I retreat into one, when people cry.

A churchy person would tell me about candle flames, and how they’re like love, and how sharing a candle flame doesn’t diminish your own in the slightest; it simply lights another’s. But I didn’t spend my life training with metaphors for nothing. Love might be a candle flame, but our bodies are made of candle wax. Mine’s already burning down too quickly to risk dripping any on the carpet for a dangerous tilt toward an extinguishing taper. (Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Selfish Asshole Soul, coming to bookstores near you.) I wasn’t kidding when I pleaded with her to live, to feel better, to fight. I do need her. But I need her to be her without needing me to be with her. I need the low maintenance. It’s the same frustration many a person feels upon becoming sick for an extended period of time, when they think, “Man, what I wouldn’t give to just breathe normally again. I’ll never again take breathing normally for granted.” Yes, you will. You are right now. That’s how I feel about having a self-sustaining mother.

Okay, back to the what-should-I-do question. Since we’re not talking terminal illness, I don’t think there’s an obligation to move home, particularly since my sister and father are already there. She’s hardly alone or without support. Should I call more? Okay, but crying shuts me down or drains me of the will to live, and I can’t cope with that on a nightly basis. I should probably just write that damn letter.

But I don’t want to.

I don’t know what to say.

I’m writing this, here, instead.

And not crying.

You’re right, Diary, this “Dear Diary” trope is already old.

I’ve never been stoned, but I don’t think I’m missing much. I’ve been high on X, I’ve drunk myself into unsafe stupors, I’ve chain smoked until I coughed up ash, and I’ve stayed awake for multiple days until I’ve hallucinated. As it looks more and more like some sort of limited or unlimited legalization of marijuana is likely within the next five years, I’m bracing myself for a shift in the volume of pot references in popular culture. Already ubiquitous, I imagine we’ll go beyond portrayals of illicit giggles and pseudoprofundity to arrive at more and more accurate portrayals of the stoned experience in pop culture, and I intend to learn what I can from these, as a blind man might learn color through patient and inadequate description.

I’m allergic to pot, so I definitely can’t smoke it. The two times I’ve tried it, my airways have constricted so alarmingly upon the first toke that I’m not in any rush to give it another go. I had a brownie once, and mostly felt like I had an itchy throat that wouldn’t clear for the remainder of the evening. “You’ve got to smoke a while before you have enough THC in your system to get high right away,” I’ve been told by well-meaning partakers. So there’s no point in continuing to take small sips in the hopes of glimpsing the experience without ending up in the hospital. 

V has me watching “Weeds,” and we’re halfway through the third season, which seems to be a shit-hitting-the-fan portion of the overall story arc. This is going to sound ridiculous coming from someone who’s never been stoned, but I’m surprised at how little the show is about getting / being stoned, with the exception of one episode that takes place at a grower’s convention. It’s to the point that I wonder if the series creators even smoke the stuff (though I’m not curious enough to look it up on the web). Is this maybe the beginning of the post-legalization portrayal of pot I’m looking forward to? Not really: if the show’s about anything, it’s about the illegality of dealing drugs, and the morally ambiguous characters who gamble in it. Like “The Wire” with punchlines. 

As one might expect from someone who’s allergic to pot, I kind of hate it, and I’m kind of annoyed by its prominence in American comedy. I get it. Pot makes shit funny. But my experience with real life smokers (of the variety who overdo it; casual and semi-professional marijuana enthusiasts tend to keep it together) is that shit gets funny because the brain gets stupid. It’s similar, from the outside, to how booze makes people horny by way of making them depressed and lonely. And it’s fun to laugh at pot-heads for about as long as it’s funny to laugh at drunks — just until the pathetic starts to show. Why must entire movies be built around the silliness of being high? (Answer, of course: same reason entire movies are built around the sappiness of being in love: we all desire an extended experience of what is, in real life, a fleeting emotion.) (PS, double-colon-parenthesis combo!) I don’t mind when one scene in a comedy rotates around smoking up, especially if the humor comes from unexpected corners, but please don’t make me watch James Franco do Spicoli for 90 minutes again. Please.

Also — and again, you can chalk this up to being allergic to the shit — the smell of pot smoke is 10x more penetrating and nauseating than cigarette stench. I look forward to legalization so that I may join the ranks of obnoxious squares who wave away smoke. Right now, if you scold or stink-eye a dude for his pot smell, you’re a narc. I don’t want to be a narc. I want to be a regular old bitch who’s trying to preserve the purity of my own personal airspace (you know, keeping it fresh for the wafting of my only-when-drinking tobacco exhalations). “People need to breathe here, you know.” “Yeah, well what are you doing at a Dave Matthews concert anyway, narc?” “Good point.”

And I think it looks ugly. Big untrimmed buds look like naked pinecones or frilled turds. Baggie weed looks like pistachio pipe tobacco with green tea leftovers mixed in. A hand-rolled joint looks like an undersized and uncircumcized cigarette. Bongs look like pool cleaning equipment stained by too much chlorine. Glass pipes look like field equipment used to take moss samples from jungle branches. It’s all ugly, and I hope that when it becomes legal there’s a redesign from Apple of the entire culture. I know that’s precisely the thing that a portion of the marijuana-loving culture fears the most, but I welcome a little corporatization of pot. It might remind us all that it’s just a recreational drug used for self-medication even though it also has hazardous health side effects (don’t start; it can easily be abused to the point of being dangerous and you know it), and we can move on with life.

Daniel Tosh has a great bit that sums up my feelings on marijuana: “I can’t wait until it’s legal. So potheads will have nothing to talk about. Grow up and do coke like an adult.” (Though I really hate that coke has even kind of a rebellious positive image, but if I go off on that in the same post as this pot rant I might end up talking myself all the way into the arms of Dr. Laura Schlessinger.)

To sum up:

• Marijuana should be legal. If you live in California, please vote for that. And none of this backdoor medical stuff anymore; like, let’s just fucking legalize it.
• Marijuana is the most obnoxious drug in my world.
• “Weeds” is okay.
• It’s hard to write blog entries without poop jokes in them.
• I shouldn’t buy tickets to see Dave Matthews.
• Dr. Laura is a bitch.

Hi, Diary. … Well. … This is awkward.

I’m into the idea of specialized units of measurement lately, names insular groups might use to define common amounts. A good unit of measurement captures the standard amount or size or impact of stuff in question while still managing to sound special or important. You don’t want your unit of measurement to exaggerate; that’s why “assload,” fun as it is to say, doesn’t really work. The obscenity gives it a heft beyond its literal meaning, and people picture a gigantic pile when really, the average human ass only carries a load of six ounces or so at any given time. But go around saying, “I need seven assloads of peaches” and you’re bound to receive a bag big enough to make pies for the entire homeless population of New Jersey, with enough left over for a Texas portion of cobbler.

Unless we mean the amount that a donkey can carry. But that takes the fun out of it. Nobody wants their assload to have Biblical overtones. “And lo, the wise men brought assloads of myrrh for the newborn king.” Mmmm. Myrrh cobbler.

Back to good units of measurement. Picture, if you can, a coffee klatsch of serial killers. Now, I’m aware that serial killers are typically not the most socially outgoing lot. The nightly news cliche would have them be the quiet types, loners, aloof. But it’s conceivable that there existed at some point in the recent past a Meetup group for serial killers that connected every third Wednesday at the Starbucks on Highway 7 for biscotti and chai. When discussing their latest accomplishments, how would they take measure? Body bags? Too redundant — a body is already a body, and therefore not in need of another name. Besides, a really advanced serial killer isn’t going to be leaving bodies intact, right? One could measure by the size of the victim, but murderers — especially the crazy ones who kill methodically and frustrate private detectives with nothing to lose — rarely feel a thrill based on bulk. If they did, we could just borrow hunting lingo and allow our group to chat about the six-point buck from last Tuesday night in the parking garage. No, a serial killer prizes the difficulty of the kill, the execution so perfect it sends a message without getting the killer caught.

To measure this difficulty of getting away with murder, the best unit of measurement would clearly be an OJ. We wouldn’t choose a Ripper (for Jack, natch) because the unit must represent something average and attainable. OJ wasn’t renowned for being the world’s most accomplished murderer; on the contrary, he’s quite famous for getting away with it almost by accident. So our serial killers could easily attain six or seven OJs in the course of a career. Collateral damage or sloppy first-time efforts could rate 1/3 an OJ. A particularly elegant and difficult assassination could be a triple-OJ, or a glove trick.

On to recycling sorters. I imagine that a constant problem in the life of a recycling sorter is coming across disgusting crap that should have ended up in the trash. (I admit, I have inadvertently put disgusting crap in my recycling from time to time, but I suspect that this is like peeing in the shower: everyone’s done it, but everybody wants somebody else to admit they’ve done it first.) Disgusting crap could be anything from a cottage cheese container that someone forgot to clean out to a newspaper that was used to line a bird cage to a milk jug full of indeterminate, colorful liquid. Sitting in the break room, our heroic sorters surely compare notes about the amount and quality of disgusting crap they’ve had to sort out of the recycling stream that day.

How about a diaper? It’s a discrete unit that clearly conjures up something dirty turning up surprisingly in something that looks so clean from the outside, and it’s small enough to still describe the many little instances of ick that can nonetheless pack a powerful repulsive punch. Plus, it’s readymade for adjectival color. “I hit three of the dirtiest diapers in a row this morning. I need some whiskey for this coffee.” “That’s nothing. I found a diaper inside another diaper on the glass conveyor.”

Something less gross and/or disturbing? Fine. News organizations are often flummoxed when it comes to estimating the scope of a political rally, protest, or astroturfed event. They flail around with attendance figures in the hopes of conveying the popular appeal of the political movement, but what does one learn from hearing “one million moms”? (Personally, I picture the world’s grimmest sale at Mervyn’s.) Besides, the media knows you don’t care about the mathematical figure. This ain’t voting. Protests are about the amount of crazy. How many crazy people showed up? How many crazies actually got to speak? How many crazies were invited and paid to speak? Were there crazy people on fucking stilts walking around? How about people wearing crazy hats and/or wigs and/or puppet heads and/or sunglasses? Did any of them drive a cop crazy enough to bust out the rubber bullets? How will the amount of crazy affect my commute?

The trick to a good name here is to avoid any judgement of the politics in question. Right now, it would be easy pickings to go with something like “teapots” or “grizzlies,” but I remember, in the not-so-distant past, attending several fervent rallies just chock full of crazies in opposition to Bush, in which the words at hand would have been a “dreadlock” of crazy, or “a rally with the same size, attendance and impact of any non-suburban weekday farmer’s market.”

No, let’s stay neutral here, and describe rally/protest crowds in terms of placards. Like the humble bumper sticker, the political rally placard is the ultimate expression of political pith for the average American. I believe it is every politically aware citizen’s deepest desire to someday march out into the sun in front of the community, God, and the news cameras with the cleverest slogan the world has ever seen. By counting up the variety and number of be-sloganed placards in a crowd, the media may neatly and accurately sum up the amount of time, effort, and crazy that went into any given protest.

In fact, the general preponderance of placards in rallies at the past 10 years can stand in for the general rise in rancor in our political debates. How many signs bearing witticisms do you think one would spot at a Montgomery sit-in, or at antebellum anti-slavery gatherings, or in the town squares of Lexington and Concord? It’s not like the technology is particularly new (though modern posterboard and permanent marker technology are often underrated, having once given Ma and Pa Kettle as much new freedom to express themselves on the cheap as today’s Twitter).

“Today, at the capitol, Governor Perry told a crowd of 175 placards that he thinks it’s time for Texas to secede. Nearby, a counter-protest of five placards and a bullhorn was cordoned off by police. Angry words were exchanged, and there was some placard-on-placard fighting, but the day ended peaceably.”

If this were an article on a celebrity gossip site, I would end this entry by comment whoring — “What do you think? Should a pack of talentless transvestites be known as a Gaggle of Gagas?” — but the last thing I want is a porn-spam of commentary to moderate, so just hit me up on Facebook if you feel the need to share.

Or do it here. I couldn’t give an assload.

Can you pet-sit my dog for the week, Diary?

Those creepy Facebook ads that read my life and try to regurgitate spam that fits it have really taken a pessimistic turn. Four months ago, Facebook noticed I was getting married and pimped all sorts of rings and dresses and manicures and vacation getaways. Now, completely unprompted, I got one that promotes saveyourmarriagetoday.com. “Get your marriage back on track!” Is there some sort of 90-Day-Itch? I’m not Elizabeth Taylor, Facebook. Back off.

This weekend was booked from start to finish, but all of Sunday’s activities were sacrificed at the altar of “too much fun at a birthday party on Saturday night.” We spent all day Saturday shopping with The Holland Clan, picking up delightful outfits for everybody (except V, who is often content make others happy when it comes to clothes), including my wedding suit. I think it makes me look good. At the very least, it should help get my marriage back on track. At any rate, shopping normally takes a lot out of me, and doing it while playing hide-amongst-the-clothes-racks with a 4-year-old, delightful as it was, made me even more tired. Luckily, a fortifying shot of Kirschwasser and three episodes of “Mad Men” got us back on track, and we headed out The Liberty to celebrate Paige’s birthday.

The thing about birthday parties between the age of twenty-one and thirty-children is that they generally involve A) going to a bar, B) drinking at the bar, and C) taking pictures at the bar for Facebook. (Maybe this is what makes Facebook so suspicious of monogamy.) Our dear friend Liz had the most brilliant brainstorm in the history of party planning, and livened things up by hiring a magician. He was very good! In the darkness of the outdoor patio, on our half of a busted-up picnic table, he performed several flawless card tricks, rope tricks, ball tricks — standard stuff, but with enough panache and charisma to make it all seem fresh. I was fortunate enough to be standing close by, so I was the one who got a ball pushed through my hand and into a cup. I couldn’t feel how he did it. I mean, I kind of could, but I didn’t want to, so I couldn’t. It was nice to see a large group of mildly sauced, very clever young Americans suspending disbelief and cynicism and enjoying magic tricks. 

I’ve been thinking for a while about the cultural tide of sarcasm. For much of the past two decades, biting sarcasm has been the default sense of humor of youth. Moderately rebellious without being at all productive or insightful, sarcasm has sustained my generation through the tribulations of the Boomer wake. I think that’s disappearing in the next crop of Americans. I think we’re seeing a return to sincerity. Now, the sarcastic snot in me wants to say this is a sign of a new generation that swallows what it’s told and doesn’t push for change, but if I’m being fair for a moment, I don’t think that’s it. I believe the generation that grew up fully engaged online and compulsively social is absorbing a stricter sense of etiquette than my generation did, and thus a return to decency and sincerity is in order. Humor seems to be sliding from anger and sarcasm into absurdity and slapstick — closer to the humor of the ’20s and ’30s. 

Then again, generational personalities are a crock of marketing shit. There’s no such thing. I don’t believe in the particular branch of cultural studies that identifies traits among completely diverse people based on age. Kind of smacks of astrology. But, like astrology, it’s fun to suspend rational disbelief for a second and speculate on what makes a generation tick. Believing that coming of age in a certain time will mold the larger parts of every individual’s personality is like, well, believing in magic. Nobody really believes magic is real. Until a magician shows up.

After the show, everybody bought him shots. I wonder how many Facebook photo albums he shows up in, untagged, labelled in the caption as “the magician guy.” 

Sunday, we slept it off, forgoing a tour of the LBJ Ranch and an Oktoberfest tasting at The Ginger Man. Coming out of Sober September, it’s a little tough to get back the pacing. Three days of drinking in a row just wasn’t in the cards. Instead, we stayed at home and tried to soothe the temper of Cricket the Anxious Poodle, who was left all alone during Saturday’s shenanigans and experienced no magic whatsoever. Sometimes I wonder if we’re driving an already unhinged poodle to the brink of absolute insanity. I wonder what true insanity even looks like in a dog. Are there psychopathic poodles? Lacking all empathy and rotely going through the motions of domestication, but capable at any moment of slaughtering another living being without remorse?

Actually, given how carnivorous animals behave in the wild, aren’t they all psychopathic to some extent? Then again, animals generally don’t kill their own kind, or at least, not outside of highly choreographed mating tussles. Killing prey is no more psychopathic than eating pork (don’t start, vegans). So maybe there aren’t psychopaths amongst the lower orders of animalia. Or maybe they’re just as rare as human ones, and we never notice when it happens. I imagine what it would be like to be one of those National Geographic photographers, waiting patiently in a snow drift to film some polar bears, then all of a sudden witnessing a brutal polar-bear-on-polar-bear crime: passionless, bloody, senseless. We’d probably blame global warming.

If Cricket ever becomes less afraid of other dogs, I think she’d be capable of murdering one. I think she’d do it without hesitation. I really worry about that, almost as much as I worry about her proven willingness to bite humans. Am I harboring a psychotic poodle? It sounds funny, but think about the implications — am I feeding and caring for a being that is evil? 

Since I can’t know — think how hard it is to even fully determine that a human being is irreparably evil — I guess I have to assume she’s not evil. I have to assume that all our nurturing will eventually allow her to stop being Anxious and live out a life of peace and tenderness. But I don’t know.

I must go now. Cricket ripped open a trash bag and ate some burnt cookies, and now she’s panting at the door because she’s got diarrhea. Tonight, I’m leaning towards evil.

You know what, diary? The nice thing about blogging being rule free and me typing all these entries up without editing them in the slightest is that I can humphrey mumph skittily scrump-a-dumph.

Ashkata wikata sclerota simpaticata pflugelhorn. Interesting bishmopod on the hishmobod this morning, as a fish wished to pish its pantsh but the little plastic diver said stop. Just picked its hand up like a traffic cop (without the white gloves of course, which aren’t very handy when deep sea diving) and mumbled a gargly underwater “stop” to the pishy fish. Later, the oyster burped out a pearl, and we all clapped. CLAP CLAP CLAP.

It snows in Maine and Minnesota and Michigan and Montana and Missouri. It’s hot in Texas and Tennessee. New Mexico is newer than New York but Santa Fe is older than Brooklyn. When you’re upside down, your upside is your backside. When you’re inside out, your insides are all over the place. When you’re beside yourself, you can have an operation to remove the twin. You should do that. You’ll lead a more fulfilling life, and possibly have a healthier digestive tract when you’re not sharing a large intestine.

Where does the name for polka dots come from? Here is the answer. Polka dots as a pattern became popular at the same time that polka as a dance became popular. This makes sense. However, nobody will know what you’re talking about when you refer to your “grungy grid.” Better stick with “flannel” or “plaid.” Hipsters take note. (You may use your Moleskine even though there’s an app for that.)

Whenever I think I’m losing weight, I’ve usually gained some, and whenever I feel fat, I’ve usually just lost some weight. Is this a problem with my nervous system? Or is my brain programmed incorrectly? How important is it to know your own weight? Does it come up in an emergency, like your address and phone number? Or is it a vain modern curiosity like our reflections in general? Doctors are allowed to know our weight, but for everyone else, it’s either “none of your business” or “why did I sign up for this reality show?” Whenever I think I weigh the right amount, a doctor tells me to exercise more, but if I tell a doctor I’m fat, they say I’m “perfectly normal.” Doesn’t our society fetishize the unusual too much for normal to be described as perfect? If normal were perfect, Photoshop wouldn’t exist. “Perfectly normal” is a phrase that approaches oxymoron status without quite getting there. We need a new word for that, when an adjective-noun or adverb-adjective pairing doesn’t form sense from opposites, but from dissonants. Dizzymoronic? 

A list of dizzymorons:

• Perfectly normal
• Temper tantrum
• Friendly wager
• Assisted suicide
• Polka dot

If you wake up in the morning feeling pretty good about yourself and you’re concerned that your ego is getting too big, just remember that at some point in your life, you, too, were an Alanis Morissette fan.

Scruffles and flaxseed, everybody. Scruffles and flaxseed.