I had a friend once — a queer ska librarian by trade — who told me he thought I might be more of an archivist than a librarian. Having finally gotten to the part of my archival management class where we actually toured the university archives, I decided that he was quite correct. I’d suspected it all along, but as I moved deeper and deeper into that freezing cold, cave-like room full of meticulously-maintained boxes of paper and other random stuff, I just got all giddy and excited. I was afraid my classmates were going to notice my stiffy. It was almost embarrassing.
For those of you who are keeping up, I’ve finished migrating all the old content into WordPress except for 1999, 2000, and the first nine months of 2001. Unfortunately, that was one of my most prolific periods, so it may take a while. I also haven’t yet gone back and corrected all the internal links. But I did finish my two big goals for this month, which were to get this particularly important weekend in 2001 converted before our seventh anniversary later this month, and also to get the Planet SOMA US Tour 1998 ready to celebrate its own tenth anniversary, which starts Saturday. I hope to have the rest done by the end of November at the latest, but we’ll see about that.
Seems we’ve found our new handyman. He’s a very chipper and friendly sort who just moved here last year from the UK. So far he seems to do good work at a reasonable price. He shows up precisely on time. And he’s not a scary redneck like so many handymen around here. He does not, alas, resemble Handy Andy in any significant way. But that’s OK.
So our wireless router/modem died yesterday afternoon, leaving us with no internet access. I’m sitting at a Starbucks right now, because it’s free and easier than driving to school or trying to find a parking space at Winston-Salem State or Wake Forest. The really sucky thing is that it’s fall break and I was really hoping to spend these two days getting caught up — and maybe even a little bit ahead — on my work. Oh well.
The other sucky thing is that we’re actually losing the DSL next week in favor of a return to cable, so if the damned router could’ve held out for one more week, it wouldn’t have been an issue anyway.
At least the weather is nice; we even broke out one of the space heaters this morning, and we started the Hallowe’en decorating last night. I think the long hell of summer is finally over. I hate summer.
Seven years ago today, gas was really cheap in downtown Fresno, where I just happened to be for the weekend. I had dinner at the Wienerschnitzel on Blackstone and then spent the evening in the library.
Seven years ago today, I was still in Fresno. I spent most of the day taking pictures of old supermarkets.
Then, I went to Club Fred, where I’d arranged to meet up with this guy I’d been exchanging email with for a couple of months. We went to a party for a while, had dinner at Denny’s on Blackstone, and then went back to his place to look at his new iBook:
Nothing was ever quite the same for me after that.
I love you, baby. Happy anniversary.
It’s election season — as if you could have missed it. I’ll most likely be voting something close to a straight Democratic ticket on the local and statewide races, which is pretty much my default strategy here. I’ll be voting for Barack Obama as well, but that’s for different reasons that I may talk about later. Or not.
I’ve lived in two very culturally distinct regions of the United States, and my political choices have always been a reflection of (or perhaps a reaction to) this geography. I moved steadily to the left of “mainstream” through my years in the south, and moved rather decisively to the right of it when I was in San Francisco. I don’t think either migration necessarily means that I’m a “centrist” at heart nor does it reflect any radical shift in my political values over time.
Ultimately, I’d call myself a “pragmatic libertarian” in philosophy. Mind you, this is not to say that I support the Libertarian Party, a group of anti-government zealots which has almost nothing to do with libertarian philosophy, as evidenced by their choice of Bob Barr to lead the ticket this year, among other shining inconsistencies. Unlike the capitalized Libertarians I don’t believe that the government should be abolished nor that taxation should be eliminated. I merely believe it should follow the most non-invasive and minimalistic course of action that is feasible and realistic. A good example is community college funding. I’m a big supporter, because a reasonable investment in education now saves what will eventually a much bigger investment in cleaning up the effects of a lack of education. Call it government by preventative mantenance — or maybe governement by cost-benefit analysis. Similarly, I question whether the government should be in the business of regulating, rewarding, or penalizing what should be private contracts or individual decisions (e.g. marriage, bearing children, home ownership, etc.)
In California, it was sometimes easy for me to reconcile voting for Republicans because western Republicans, particularly urban coastal ones, often come from this intellectual tradition, or at least from a similar one. Even John McCain used to be accused of it before that scary stranger inhabited his body. Many of them started out with an assumption and a foundation of equal rights for all individuals (social libertarianism, if you will) onto which they built a level of more fiscally conservative or pro-business policies. Again, it was a largely intellectual process that reflected a consistency of reasoning with which I did not always agree, but one that I could usually respect. Of course, this is not the case with all western Republicans, and I still found myself siding (sometimes reluctantly) with Democrats as often as not in California, but this sort of approach is much more common west of the Rockies.
In the south, however, most Republicans seem to lack that intellectual aspect (maybe it involves too many shades of grey) and are coming more from an ideological tradition — specifically a fundamentalist Christian-derived ideology. For many, I suspect, it’s more a case of “knowing their audience” than an indicator of any specific conviction (Elizabeth Dole, in particular, strikes me as just such a performer), but the end result is a inconsistent ideology of less government — except when it comes to sex, or profanity on TV, or flag burning, or religious diversity, or other things that are “inconsistent with North Carolina values.” In these cases, the same Republicans who want government out of our everyday lives are far too willing to make exceptions, citing God, family values and norms, or whatever other excuses they can concoct. I have no respect for parroted ideology; there is no critical thinking going on here, only memorization of random Bible verses and glib soundbites.
Southern Democrats, mind you, are only somewhat less offensive, but they at least tend to pay lip service to the concept of social diversity and to skip the more blatantly race-baiting and gay-baiting tactics of their Republican counterparts. In fact, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress from my district is actually an avowed supporter of same-sex marriage, which is considerably further than Democrats are willing to go, even in California. Barring any other realistic option, these southern Democrats, mixed bag that they are, generally get my support, and will probably continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
It’s gonna be a really long, ugly week, so I’ll get these out of the way right now lest you not hear from me again for several days:
- Is it really sad that I didn’t even realize the World Series was going on until I realized the DVR hadn’t recorded The Simpsons last night? And that I still don’t care?
- Cool download via Scrubbles. This is surely one of the most bizarre albums ever recorded, featuring Hugo Montenegro (who wrote the theme from “I Dream of Jeannie” among other classics), an early Moog synthesizer, and covers of such groovy hits as “Dizzy”, “MacArthur Park”, and “Touch Me”, not to mention “My Way”. I remember it very well, as it may have been the first 8-track my parents ever owned. I think it came with one of my dad’s Buicks. For some reason, it sort of gives me visions of the cast of The Mothers-in-Law on acid.
- Via my hubby: The Skeptic’s Annotated Bible. It’s a fundamentalist’s nightmare.
- New site from the creator of Charlotte Eats: Charlotte Ads.
- And don’t forget the newly remodeled Diners of the World, to which I may even be contributing soon.
Back to the grindstone…
There it was in Food Lion tonight, reminding me that after Sunday, Opus will be no more. I’ll miss him despite the fact that he was never quite the same once Milo and Binkley deserted him almost twenty years ago, ending the best comic strip that ever was. I wish him all the herring snacks he can eat in whatever future life he may have.