How I spent my week-end.

Supine.

With peregrin8 and misterdarkness off in the American Southwest, I availed myself heavily of their DVD collection. Years ago Mr. D lent me The League of Gentlemen but at the time I had only a domestic, NTSC-only, one-region DVD player. Now I have a PAL-capable, all-region player, so I grabbed all three seasons of the show and spent most of the weekend watching. Was underwhelmed by the first couple of episodes, but the creepiness of the series certainly did creep up on me; by the end of the first series (in typical Beeb fashion, each series is 6 30-minute episodes) I was absolutely hooked. Similarly, the radical format change in Season 3 put me off at first; but by the time it became clear that each story concluded in the same traumatic incident on the street, I was once again an utter slave to the series. I dutifully watched all the docu-stuff on the second disks of series 2 and 3 but have yet to sit through the commentaries, which I expect I'll do tonight, putting off other explorations (e.g., Angel) and ignoring both Netflix and the stack of movies I bought months ago and haven't got round to yet.

Neglected to go to a naked dancer party Saturday night. This is the second time in three weeks I've opted not to attend a previously scheduled sex thing. I suspect I'm being a fuddy-duddy. Haven't even been to Green Lantern's underwear night in months; however, Maestro ended up going and reported that it was dead-dead.

Non-sequitur 1: Target marketing gone awry: I occasionally get even snailmail offering me cheap straight porn. But the plethora of ill-directed spam amazes me. I know, that's the nature of spam; it doesn't matter who the target market it since it's strewn about so widely. But recently I've been getting emails with just two (correctly spelled) words in the subjects that are seriously LESS likely to make me open them (or click a link or any such thing) than any teen barnyard sluts that visit: "SUBJ: Christian dating".

Non-sequitur 2: Am I imagining things, or was LJ completely down for a while this morning?

Non-sequitur 2a: Has LJ moved their spell-check to a far, far worse dictionary than previously? This dictionary doesn't know Hollandaise, sequitur, lunchmeats, edamame, kalamatas, muffaletta, portobello, phyllo, or underripe. Tha's pretty lame.

I made dinner Friday night for three Cheese Lords and one Lord Emeritus: erstwhile flatmate Lord Broccoli was on Fall Break from Oberlin last week and so stayed Tuesday through Saturday. Lords Faux 'Mo, Blue Pants, and Peter came over for dinner and drinks and socializing and a wee bit of singing. I made salsa—actually combined two fresh salsas from the Giant's fridge case, one of them full of underripe mango, and cooked them with a little sugar and a lot of chipotle—edamame, fresh creamed corn (a recent favorite recipe, with tarragon, thyme, and sage) baked in phyllo cups, grilled asparagus (no time for Hollandaise, alas), and portobellos Baudolino (lemon-spiked cream sauce with kalamatas, capers, sun-dried tomatoes, and 'roasted' red peppers). Wine and beer and port. No dessert, but all told, not bad for a dinner that I didn't plan on making until mid-day Friday and didn't shop for until 6 p.m.

maestro_live came by Saturday afternoon just as I was getting a pan of thrice-barfed eggs into the oven. Kind of muffaletta-style, with spicy Italian lunchmeats and olive salad, plus one leftover portobello.

Retail therapy yesterday at 'the mall': I bought a French press ('Because you don't have enough coffee machines?' Maestro asked) and a cutting board ('Because you don't have enough cutting boards?' Maestro asked) and an adorable pair of Rockport quasi-tennis shoes (I cut him off at the pass on this one) and some work socks. The French press is the same Bodun model my recent-San Franciscan-transplant friend Atom(bang) has, from which he served me simply wonderful coffee.

I might have a wee bit of work to do now if I look hard enough.

Zero-tolerance politics; zero tolerance FOR politics.

A recent LJ friend whom I admire and whose journal I enjoy reading this morning quoted another LJ friend of hers as saying:

'I have trimmed my Livejournal reading list by two-thirds and I'm still seeing political posts. Even the friendliest of them feels condescending: "Oh, if only you knew the facts you would of course come to my conclusion!"

'I'm sorry, but it doesn't work that way. People can come to different conclusions without being ignorant of reality. And I am beginning to resent people who assume that I need education, as if I am too stupid to go out and search for the information I need to make an informed decision.'

From wading, briefly and only toe-deep, into the discussion at the original post, it appears that my friend feels similarly. Therefore I must preface this by saying my reaction here is not directed at her particularly, but is meant as an expedient measure to clear things up for any- and everyone on my f-list:

Ahem.

THIS IS MY JOURNAL. YOU ARE WELCOME TO READ MY JOURNAL. YOU ARE WELCOME NOT TO READ MY JOURNAL. IN NO SENSE IS THIS JOURNAL FOR YOU, AND YOU ARE NOT IN THE LEAST WELCOME TO ATTEMPT TO DICTATE ITS CONTENTS. IF YOU BELIEVE THE STEWARDSHIP OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IS NOT IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO EXPRESS VEHEMENT OPINIONS ABOUT, TO ARGUE STRENUOUSLY ABOUT, TO ATTEMPT APPEALS TO MORALITY ABOUT, YOU ARE HEARTILY ENCOURAGED TO ESTRANGE ME.

Thank you.

Now then:



I doubt a jack o'lantern will sway anyone. I just thought it was a really impressive carving.

Honestly, I don't even expect to sway anyone with rhetoric. For most of my friends list, I'm preaching to the converted. But the "get your politics off my reading list" thing pisses me off. My politics is MY journal, not your reading list. And seriously, if you can't be bothered by politics in times like these, just plain fuck you.

Nobody likes gettin' condescent to; but 95 percent of Americans ARE too stupid, or too lazy, or both, to find out any information for themselves. It's easier to parrot back bullshit like "Obama is risky" or "McCain is volatile" than to listen and read and grasp enough facts to make a real decision about this race, or any race. And I am not now, nor have I ever been, a Kool-Aid-drinking Obama convert. I just happen to think that many of the things that Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin believe in are not just wrong, they are reprehensible. Even allowing for campaign pandering—i.e., allowing for a post-inaugural tempering of the worst, most evil policies in their arsenal, this ticket could hardly help but move the country further down a deadly path, widening the gap between rich and poor, plundering natural resources for the enrichment of their rich pals, and inviting the LORD to share in the governance of the United States. I do not and will not apologize for opposing such ideas and opinions with all the vitriol I can muster. You want effective persuasion? They pay people to do that. You want probably pointless spewage of ideological rage and borderline despair into the void? I'm your man.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not claiming Obama as any kind of panacea. I think he is as likely as any national politician to sell his soul, and our well-being, to the highest corporate bidder. If he turns out to be as good and solid and honorable a man as his speeches would lead us to believe, I'll be ecstatic. But on the other hand, anybody who ends a discussion pointing out the utter silliness of "one faith" by suggesting the solution is for everyone to go home and read their bibles... well... that's a really, really dumb conclusion aimed at the really, really dumb religiosi in his audience. Ugh.

Anyway. It'll all be over soon. The election, the economy, the country, the species. So suck it up and deal.