Wee, exuberance!
First, I've been writing this paper in the computer lab. The Honors one, which isn't so full of distractions... supposedly. I have been wrong.
Maybe I'm just set off by such small things, but I do not like it when someone puts their feet up on the desk while they're on a public computer. It's just... ewwww. I don't want to sit at a place and put my stuff where feet have been. What's especially bad is when they're sitting next to the wall and they put their feet on it. Ewwwwwwwww. I hope that's not where the dirt marks on the walls have come from, but something tells me...
Don't get me wrong, I don't think feet are bad or anything, but they have no reason to be there, and they tend to get dirty enough, after wearing sandals around campus, that it becomes a slight sanitary concern for me.
I also dislike people who answer their cell phone in here. It's quite similar to doing it in the upper levels of the library in the rows of study carrels. No, I don't want to hear about your plans with your partner tonight, or a friend's indiscretions. At least, not while I'm studying. I have a feeling that if I were to ask them about further details, they'd be offended that I listened, but it's such a quiet place typically that I can't help it. It's like Scott, except that I can hear Scott no matter where I am. (And he doesn't annoy me... unless, again, I'm trying to focus on something.)
I worked on this paper on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (and fragmentation!) yesterday until I was just sick of it. It was all I worked on in the afternoon.
Today I have worked on it, and reached some sort of resolution. Yay! At least I have the right number of pages. Now I have to wait a couple of hours, reread it, and wonder whether it sounds remotely coherent or not.
I can't reread it right now because then I will have not yet purged my nonwritten assumptions, and so whenever I have a pronoun, I'll not be as sensitive if, say, it refers to something in my mind!
But yes. Now I get to break by reading some Othello. Wee!
And I think other than that, I'll take the afternoon off. I mean, I'll actually only get, what, an hour to myself? But it will be sooooo nice!
Word of the day: Micawber. From a Dickens work. "Romantic, irresponsible, or feckless optimist," says the Oxford English Dictionary. Operative as a noun or a verb.
I wish that Ashley would stop Micawbering around, as she's scaring all the square-nosed vituperate defenders of the facts of life away and replacing them with decadent half-full bowls of fudge ice cream with suggestively poised spoons.
... I think I know what I'm going to eat at Wyrd. If I remember after rereading my paper.
Sep 27, 2007
Quizzes! Or... I'm going to write my paper after classes, not before
These are entertaining because they're relatively few questions and are well done, even if they're not the most accurate. ;) I like their "Choose your own adventure" kind of style, one response determining the next question.
(Second try? Watership Down.)
You're Siddhartha!
by Hermann Hesse
You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try
anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent
some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in.
This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's
time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in
ferries.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
(Second try? Watership Down.)
You're Pelosi-Edwards!
As Nancy Pelosi, you stand as one of the only true and courageous people that anyone can
name. Despite a haphazard reputation and unexpected rise to power, you could be one of the only
legitimate hopes for your friends. You have been able to tell the truth about what is happening,
and reflect a widely held but somewhat quiet set of beliefs. Recently, you have been bestowed
with great resources by your power company. Your latent love for a military retiree is bound to
get you in trouble.
You select John Edwards as your running mate after he charmed you into picking him.
Take the 2008 Presidential Ticket Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're the United Nations!
Most people think you're ineffective, but you are trying to
completely save the world from itself, so there's always going to be a long
way to go. You're always the one trying to get friends to talk to each
other, enemies to talk to each other, anyone who can to just talk instead of
beating each other about the head and torso. Sometimes it works and sometimes
it doesn't, and you get very schizophrenic as a result. But your heart
is in the right place, and sometimes also in New York.
Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid
You're West Virginia!
You are a true coal miner's daughter, or maybe even son. You probably
smoke, and your lungs are paying for it every day. While you're definitely willing to
separate yourself from the crowd for what you believe in, this policy has put you into
a state of unending obscurity and poverty. As a result, people only come to visit you
on foot, and usually they're just trying to prove that they can do it. Keep a canary on
your shoulder whenever possible.
Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're an Octopus!
Thoughtful and reflective, you always appear to have tilted your
head slightly to one side. You like stretching out your languorous body wherever
you can, but not everything is always relaxed. You wear your emotions on your
sleeve and have a terrible poker face. And when you feel most threatened, you start
writing things down furiously. If there's a sucker born every minute, there's one
of you born roughly every day.
Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
Sep 25, 2007
A few things:
1. The man's eyes at the top of this article... will haunt me. His whole expression... just... aaaagh!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7013068.stm
2. I bowled excellently yesterday. 202, 257, 202. The 257 was two strikes away from perfection (I spared those frames). It felt good to bowl that game, because I'd just come out of my first game striking out and I'd found my rhythm. I could literally release the ball, and always have it go to the same place, and always come back. One of the times I ended up sparing was because I made a slight adjustment, and the other time I didn't quite release right with my hands, but all those other times the motions were automagic.
3. I loathe when a person gets out of the car to hold a parking spot for someone who's circling around. In the case yesterday, it was in the parking garage where spaces are limited, and the way traffic runs, the car must go around. But I see a parking spot and three people blocking my way to it. It was irritating, and while I did luck out and find a better space (one that's not in the sun), they used their bodies to prevent my car from going where I wanted to go, leaving me powerless to have done anything except try to reason with them and block traffic while doing so. Grr. I can't run them over.
I've been trying to think of some sort of overarching rule they broke beyond this, besides that they thwarted me. I guess it's that they mixed pedestrianism and driving to their advantage, when it seems they should either drive... or be pedestrians, but they shouldn't be both at once. I don't know.
1. The man's eyes at the top of this article... will haunt me. His whole expression... just... aaaagh!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7013068.stm
2. I bowled excellently yesterday. 202, 257, 202. The 257 was two strikes away from perfection (I spared those frames). It felt good to bowl that game, because I'd just come out of my first game striking out and I'd found my rhythm. I could literally release the ball, and always have it go to the same place, and always come back. One of the times I ended up sparing was because I made a slight adjustment, and the other time I didn't quite release right with my hands, but all those other times the motions were automagic.
3. I loathe when a person gets out of the car to hold a parking spot for someone who's circling around. In the case yesterday, it was in the parking garage where spaces are limited, and the way traffic runs, the car must go around. But I see a parking spot and three people blocking my way to it. It was irritating, and while I did luck out and find a better space (one that's not in the sun), they used their bodies to prevent my car from going where I wanted to go, leaving me powerless to have done anything except try to reason with them and block traffic while doing so. Grr. I can't run them over.
I've been trying to think of some sort of overarching rule they broke beyond this, besides that they thwarted me. I guess it's that they mixed pedestrianism and driving to their advantage, when it seems they should either drive... or be pedestrians, but they shouldn't be both at once. I don't know.
Sep 14, 2007
Death and Pictures
Nothing says "Thank you" to your Maid of Honor like a constant reminder of her mortality.
http://www.history.rochester.edu/godeys/03-50/ammw.htm
This which I link you to is part of a larger page depicting a ladies' magazine from the 1850s, and you can access it by deleting everything after "godeys/". It's interesting, but I just wanted to say three things.
1. What an ingenius gift. If such a thing were to be given in our time, it would have to be either to a person who treasures unusual things in general or to a person that would appreciate its particular... flare for taking a common artistic trope and turning it into a timekeeper.
2. "This very curious relic must have then intended to occupy a stationary place on a prie-dieu, or small altar, in a private oratory; for its weight is much too great to have admitted of its being carried in any way attached to the person." I'm sure if its weight were inadmissable, most people would forebear carrying it about as a matter of taste, which is lamentable because I would find its appearance intriguing and delightful.
3. What does the Latin mean? I can acquire some of it just through repeated exposure to common phrases, but I don't have nearly enough vocabulary or syntactical knowledge to read a language I've never studied.
Now, to true purpose... pictures of Dragon*con! I took about two rolls, and many of them were "action shots" and thus of varying quality. I will use a couple that Leslie took as well (the Flying Spaghetti Monster ones) because I love them so.
I've been touched by his (her?) noodly appendage!
Monty Python makes an appearance here.
Cookie Monster had to be one of my favorite costumes. And his location here was suitable...
Leslie in costume! She made that dress herself. It looks even better in person. As does she.
My costume. Note the sash sagging some at this later point in the day.
Leslie is touched! (She was touched first; if you cannot guess, this has no sense of chronology.)
A rebel pilot.
Random elf! He asked for directions and I couldn't help him. I may've sent him the wrong way. Alas.
http://www.history.rochester.edu/godeys/03-50/ammw.htm
This which I link you to is part of a larger page depicting a ladies' magazine from the 1850s, and you can access it by deleting everything after "godeys/". It's interesting, but I just wanted to say three things.
1. What an ingenius gift. If such a thing were to be given in our time, it would have to be either to a person who treasures unusual things in general or to a person that would appreciate its particular... flare for taking a common artistic trope and turning it into a timekeeper.
2. "This very curious relic must have then intended to occupy a stationary place on a prie-dieu, or small altar, in a private oratory; for its weight is much too great to have admitted of its being carried in any way attached to the person." I'm sure if its weight were inadmissable, most people would forebear carrying it about as a matter of taste, which is lamentable because I would find its appearance intriguing and delightful.
3. What does the Latin mean? I can acquire some of it just through repeated exposure to common phrases, but I don't have nearly enough vocabulary or syntactical knowledge to read a language I've never studied.
Now, to true purpose... pictures of Dragon*con! I took about two rolls, and many of them were "action shots" and thus of varying quality. I will use a couple that Leslie took as well (the Flying Spaghetti Monster ones) because I love them so.
The Wheel of Fortune I bought
The wallscroll I bought.
Random Star Wars people.
Luna, Dumbledore, and Harry.
I have no clue who they were supposed to be. I was just amused by, "thog's armor sometimes chafe thog in thog's man parts."
I've been touched by his (her?) noodly appendage!
Monty Python makes an appearance here.
Cookie Monster had to be one of my favorite costumes. And his location here was suitable...
Leslie in costume! She made that dress herself. It looks even better in person. As does she.
My costume. Note the sash sagging some at this later point in the day.
Leslie is touched! (She was touched first; if you cannot guess, this has no sense of chronology.)
A rebel pilot.
Random elf! He asked for directions and I couldn't help him. I may've sent him the wrong way. Alas.
Sep 6, 2007
Dragon*con and Miscellany
So. Instead of being the dutiful son and coming home for Labor Day weekend, I chose to have an uproarious time in Atlanta with Leslie, Derek, and Becky and 90,000 odd others at Dragon*con, the sci-fi/fantasy convention.
We drove down Friday morning. I missed class for it, but got all of the assignments and such squared away earlier. It was a smooth drive, relatively uneventful. Leslie does Madlibs in a custom way, simply constructing vague frames of sentences and having user input fill in nearly every word. The results are only vaguely coherent, but the word combinations are... sometimes gems. The downside is that you can only do a couple at a time, but quality over quantity is good.
We opted to use MARTA, the Atlanta public rail transit system. (MARTA is an acronym meaning something like that all jumbled up to sound like a character from Arrested Development.) Parking at one of their outlying stations was 80% cheaper than parking downtown. We stopped at one of the northern ones, got off, and went up. The rails at this point are over ground, and it's a very light, clean, lofty feeling station.
Then we went to get tickets. It was taking us a minute to look over the computer console, and it must've shown, because a guy walked up to us in a dirty white t-shirt. Homeless vibes. He said he could help us out for $5, which was technically cheaper. We were all having separate misgivings, but no one else was voicing them, so I accepted, and he performed his shady magic, checking all the cards he had (which he must've found or something) before going up to the entrance machines and (I realize this in hindsight) activating the handicapped doors by reaching around. (These doors are places where you'd swipe your ticket or your card; it's all automated and, by all appearances, unobserved.)
So he eventually split off after commenting a bit about all the crossdressers at Dragon*con and how weird that is, and we boarded the train and went on, luggage in hand. It was a nice view and feeling, going along. I would've enjoyed it more unladen and without any particular place to go, but... eh.
Arriving at the station, we try to leave and realize that you need a ticket to do so. So we ask a security officer (who sits behind her door, probably looking at camera feeds) how to get out if we no longer have our ticket. She advised us that there were handicapped exits that worked like automatic doors. Ahhh. So we get directed in the right direction and go up, up, up this long escalator, and emerge in downtown Atlanta, with our hotel half a block away.
Now, the hotel. There were already people about in costume (a situation that goes on all weekend) and with shiny pre-registered badges. We go up to the desk to check in, expecting to be quickly issued keys to a spacious room with two sizeable beds. Ah, no?
Becky was handling the negotiations, as the room was under her name, but the highlights were this: We could go a few blocks away and stay at a hotel with the first two nights' stays free, but we weren't keen on it, having already committed money budget-wise and being in this hotel being a darn convenience, as it's where the con is at! So then next they apparently explaint hat any request for a room is simply a preference, and this was a preference that could not be fulfilled. However, they do have pull-away beds that would help accomodate the required number of people, being big.
Finally we get up to our room, request a pull-away bed, and are dismayed upon seeing it, to the point of initially sending it away. It's only big enough for one person. So we try requesting two. Sorry, we only get one bed? Well, one it is. We'll make do, the final decision is, because we're tired of moving our stuff around at this point.
Now we're in a convention. What is there to do? Well, first there are panels. These are discussion areas, groups, what have you organized in a room going over a certain topic of interest. Their formality varies. Sometimes a movie or movies are being shown, sometimes a famous person or people are there, sometimes it's people discussing a topic with the attendees, sometimes it's a simple lecture, and sometimes it's people just meeting and having fun. They had different tracks of these things happening all weekend, as diverse as Corset-making, Observatories in Space, Full Metal Alchemist (an anime), a Yule ball, Battlestar Galactica cast reunion, the Dawn costume contest, and so on.
Then there are the dealer's rooms, exhibition rooms, and art rooms. The first one is self-explanatory. The second is a lot like the first one, except that a lot more companies are there actually promoting products, so it's less of a flea market feel as you're often talking directly with representatives from a certain company. The third is where individual artists sell their wares, all of varying quality and pricing. Many works were under silent auction.
And finally there's just all the random stuff going on. They had bars going on in between the three hotels this was being held in (all hotels being adjacent to one another). There were parties going on in various rooms at any one time. Tons of people congregated in the lobbies together, randomly taking pictures of compelling costumes. They had tons of game-playing going on, though I never did that part. (Some of it was card games, some role-playing, some strategy.) For food, the Peachtree Center was adjacent, with a food court and seating. It was like a city within a city.
I'm not going to go into everything I did, since I've already spent so much describing just getting there. So instead I'll degenerate into lists of some of the things I did and bought, to give a vague idea of what can be done there, though there's so much going on you couldn't do it all in 20 years.
What I bought: shiny dice (mostly blue ones, including a set of frosty ones and a D6 with the libra sign for 6), a t-shirt about English as the back-alley pilferer of other languages, a Tenchi wallscroll that I have just noticed is no longer on my wall because it fell down (Tenchi is an anime as well), a soundtrack to something that I've since learned is both pirated and not what I thought I was getting, Wanderers from Ys III for the Super Nintendo, Killer Bunnies Green Booster Deck, and a piece of art depicting the Wheel of Fortune, turned by the four seasons (?) as they pull on the wheel whose center has the Jewish kaph (כּ), which in numerology represents the number 20. No, I'm not sure what that means. Help?
I also went to several panels. Some of them include The Great Observatories (where I got a lot of cool space pictures courtesy of NASA), a Star Trek The Next Generation panel with Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and Jonathan Frakes (or Data, Dr. Crusher, and Riker), Hot Fuzz: The Verdict, Weird and Unusual Scientific Studies (and the Rationales Behind Them), and a Mythology and Folklore panel where Leslie and I both won free stuff (books, that is... mine being a 3 book set Tales of the Frog Princess). Oh, and there was a Cruxshadows concert. And... and... and...
I had an excellent time. ^_^
Being back is mostly good, but there are a few things I see that distress me. We've been having protesters on campus all week. Not many, probably half a dozen, wielding signs in front of the library, stirring up a racket with their preaching. They speak words of condemnation, shouting at women wearing pants or short hair, men who try to contradict them, and anything that makes them angry, people that have nothing objectionable going on at all. Their message is one where people go to hell. Because. They... say so? Of course, one of their signs (and my "favorite") is the one where it has a front with "God Says" and a whole bunch of drivel, catch-phrases and such of a certain ideological stance. (Homosexuality is a sin, abortion is murder...) On the back was "Satan Says" and things like Homosexual sex is good, abortion is okay... and it disturbs me. It disturbs me that there is this double transfer. One is that social issues are becoming political ones, not that that's new. Whether or not two partners of the same gender should be allowed to have the same legal protections as the rest of those under the umbrella of marriage, that is a legal expression of a social objection. Whether a woman should be allowed to decide for herself whether she should have an abortion (and whether her fetus is a person or not, and thus whether she should be wrong to make such a choice, given other pressures which she is undoubtedly accounting for). This is the wish, not of protecting civil order, but of guaranteeing social order. At the same time, it is personal bigotry, translated through religious means, and applied to their view of the social world, and their wishes on a political landscape. It is this great monolith of opinion, the theocratic crag, divorced from the Founding Fathers' wisdom but using their freedoms to countermand the liberties of those they oppose as sinful. I do not articulate what I fear well enough, but it's like... what if Thoreau had practiced civil disobedience because he thought slavery was right and just, because the blacks are inherently inferior to whites and must be guided for our benefit and, somehow, theirs? What if someone were advocating for that now? And what if there were a fear, a vague one, that some of these ideas were gradually being accepted? That though the half-dozen will always be the loudest voices, they will not be the only bodies, and who can resist the press of masses and masses of people?
I hope this fear is as unreasonable as the fear (or welcoming) of most apocalypses.
We drove down Friday morning. I missed class for it, but got all of the assignments and such squared away earlier. It was a smooth drive, relatively uneventful. Leslie does Madlibs in a custom way, simply constructing vague frames of sentences and having user input fill in nearly every word. The results are only vaguely coherent, but the word combinations are... sometimes gems. The downside is that you can only do a couple at a time, but quality over quantity is good.
We opted to use MARTA, the Atlanta public rail transit system. (MARTA is an acronym meaning something like that all jumbled up to sound like a character from Arrested Development.) Parking at one of their outlying stations was 80% cheaper than parking downtown. We stopped at one of the northern ones, got off, and went up. The rails at this point are over ground, and it's a very light, clean, lofty feeling station.
Then we went to get tickets. It was taking us a minute to look over the computer console, and it must've shown, because a guy walked up to us in a dirty white t-shirt. Homeless vibes. He said he could help us out for $5, which was technically cheaper. We were all having separate misgivings, but no one else was voicing them, so I accepted, and he performed his shady magic, checking all the cards he had (which he must've found or something) before going up to the entrance machines and (I realize this in hindsight) activating the handicapped doors by reaching around. (These doors are places where you'd swipe your ticket or your card; it's all automated and, by all appearances, unobserved.)
So he eventually split off after commenting a bit about all the crossdressers at Dragon*con and how weird that is, and we boarded the train and went on, luggage in hand. It was a nice view and feeling, going along. I would've enjoyed it more unladen and without any particular place to go, but... eh.
Arriving at the station, we try to leave and realize that you need a ticket to do so. So we ask a security officer (who sits behind her door, probably looking at camera feeds) how to get out if we no longer have our ticket. She advised us that there were handicapped exits that worked like automatic doors. Ahhh. So we get directed in the right direction and go up, up, up this long escalator, and emerge in downtown Atlanta, with our hotel half a block away.
Now, the hotel. There were already people about in costume (a situation that goes on all weekend) and with shiny pre-registered badges. We go up to the desk to check in, expecting to be quickly issued keys to a spacious room with two sizeable beds. Ah, no?
Becky was handling the negotiations, as the room was under her name, but the highlights were this: We could go a few blocks away and stay at a hotel with the first two nights' stays free, but we weren't keen on it, having already committed money budget-wise and being in this hotel being a darn convenience, as it's where the con is at! So then next they apparently explaint hat any request for a room is simply a preference, and this was a preference that could not be fulfilled. However, they do have pull-away beds that would help accomodate the required number of people, being big.
Finally we get up to our room, request a pull-away bed, and are dismayed upon seeing it, to the point of initially sending it away. It's only big enough for one person. So we try requesting two. Sorry, we only get one bed? Well, one it is. We'll make do, the final decision is, because we're tired of moving our stuff around at this point.
Now we're in a convention. What is there to do? Well, first there are panels. These are discussion areas, groups, what have you organized in a room going over a certain topic of interest. Their formality varies. Sometimes a movie or movies are being shown, sometimes a famous person or people are there, sometimes it's people discussing a topic with the attendees, sometimes it's a simple lecture, and sometimes it's people just meeting and having fun. They had different tracks of these things happening all weekend, as diverse as Corset-making, Observatories in Space, Full Metal Alchemist (an anime), a Yule ball, Battlestar Galactica cast reunion, the Dawn costume contest, and so on.
Then there are the dealer's rooms, exhibition rooms, and art rooms. The first one is self-explanatory. The second is a lot like the first one, except that a lot more companies are there actually promoting products, so it's less of a flea market feel as you're often talking directly with representatives from a certain company. The third is where individual artists sell their wares, all of varying quality and pricing. Many works were under silent auction.
And finally there's just all the random stuff going on. They had bars going on in between the three hotels this was being held in (all hotels being adjacent to one another). There were parties going on in various rooms at any one time. Tons of people congregated in the lobbies together, randomly taking pictures of compelling costumes. They had tons of game-playing going on, though I never did that part. (Some of it was card games, some role-playing, some strategy.) For food, the Peachtree Center was adjacent, with a food court and seating. It was like a city within a city.
I'm not going to go into everything I did, since I've already spent so much describing just getting there. So instead I'll degenerate into lists of some of the things I did and bought, to give a vague idea of what can be done there, though there's so much going on you couldn't do it all in 20 years.
What I bought: shiny dice (mostly blue ones, including a set of frosty ones and a D6 with the libra sign for 6), a t-shirt about English as the back-alley pilferer of other languages, a Tenchi wallscroll that I have just noticed is no longer on my wall because it fell down (Tenchi is an anime as well), a soundtrack to something that I've since learned is both pirated and not what I thought I was getting, Wanderers from Ys III for the Super Nintendo, Killer Bunnies Green Booster Deck, and a piece of art depicting the Wheel of Fortune, turned by the four seasons (?) as they pull on the wheel whose center has the Jewish kaph (כּ), which in numerology represents the number 20. No, I'm not sure what that means. Help?
I also went to several panels. Some of them include The Great Observatories (where I got a lot of cool space pictures courtesy of NASA), a Star Trek The Next Generation panel with Brent Spiner, Gates McFadden, and Jonathan Frakes (or Data, Dr. Crusher, and Riker), Hot Fuzz: The Verdict, Weird and Unusual Scientific Studies (and the Rationales Behind Them), and a Mythology and Folklore panel where Leslie and I both won free stuff (books, that is... mine being a 3 book set Tales of the Frog Princess). Oh, and there was a Cruxshadows concert. And... and... and...
I had an excellent time. ^_^
Being back is mostly good, but there are a few things I see that distress me. We've been having protesters on campus all week. Not many, probably half a dozen, wielding signs in front of the library, stirring up a racket with their preaching. They speak words of condemnation, shouting at women wearing pants or short hair, men who try to contradict them, and anything that makes them angry, people that have nothing objectionable going on at all. Their message is one where people go to hell. Because. They... say so? Of course, one of their signs (and my "favorite") is the one where it has a front with "God Says" and a whole bunch of drivel, catch-phrases and such of a certain ideological stance. (Homosexuality is a sin, abortion is murder...) On the back was "Satan Says" and things like Homosexual sex is good, abortion is okay... and it disturbs me. It disturbs me that there is this double transfer. One is that social issues are becoming political ones, not that that's new. Whether or not two partners of the same gender should be allowed to have the same legal protections as the rest of those under the umbrella of marriage, that is a legal expression of a social objection. Whether a woman should be allowed to decide for herself whether she should have an abortion (and whether her fetus is a person or not, and thus whether she should be wrong to make such a choice, given other pressures which she is undoubtedly accounting for). This is the wish, not of protecting civil order, but of guaranteeing social order. At the same time, it is personal bigotry, translated through religious means, and applied to their view of the social world, and their wishes on a political landscape. It is this great monolith of opinion, the theocratic crag, divorced from the Founding Fathers' wisdom but using their freedoms to countermand the liberties of those they oppose as sinful. I do not articulate what I fear well enough, but it's like... what if Thoreau had practiced civil disobedience because he thought slavery was right and just, because the blacks are inherently inferior to whites and must be guided for our benefit and, somehow, theirs? What if someone were advocating for that now? And what if there were a fear, a vague one, that some of these ideas were gradually being accepted? That though the half-dozen will always be the loudest voices, they will not be the only bodies, and who can resist the press of masses and masses of people?
I hope this fear is as unreasonable as the fear (or welcoming) of most apocalypses.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)