Et alia

So I took a two-year sabbatical. What of it? And in the interim other people seem to have pilfered my title for different bloggy endeavors, but I had it first so I’m going to keep it. I raised my flag back in 2006, with a whole ‘nother thought in mind about what this might be. It’s not that anymore, but I can’t say what it is either.

What brings me back now I’m not all that sure of. A certain restlessness that produces ideas I want to save or highlight? Maybe. A notion that if I keep everything I think to myself I might as well not think it? A narcissistic desire to claim a tiny bit of space on the interwebs as my own and decorate it however I want? That’s pretty close. All of the above, even closer.

Since January 2008, I’ve been every bit as observant, opinionated, and consterned as before, but I held back because I didn’t think anybody was listening. The difference is that now I don’t care if anybody’s listening.

A few items that have come to mind along the way:

Conservatives really have a problem with their own suppressed homosexual tendencies. Most of their “values” are more in the category of self-loathing.

John Edwards goes down in history as one of our major douchebags. Then again, so does Mark. Sanford of SC.

Tiger Woods too.

3D technology will not be saving the movie business. Avatar was cool enough to watch, but the story was warmed over Little Big Man.

Enough with celebrity chefs. I happen to know one, or an aspiring one anyway. He’s a pompous ass with no redeeming qualities.

There will always be one natural (or man-made) disaster or another to amuse and entertain us. Quite a few came and went while I was away. Most of them are quickly forgotten, or at least displaced by the next one. I hate to think of what will displace the BP oil spill.

We can’t let the Tea Partiers off the hook so easily. They strike me as lazy thinkers who believe that having read the Constitution once or twice and a handful of the Federalist Papers makes them patriots. It doesn’t. I suspect my father is one of them.

One day we’ll be able to admit that there’s no point in going to the moon again. Not when we can’t even have an intercity bullet train, or true universal health care, or food that’s guaranteed free of E. coli. That day hasn’t yet arrived, though.

This vegetable garden craze -- sometimes I wonder. For the cost of seeds, soil and soil amendments, tools, water, fighting gophers and other annoying wildlife, and my time, I could buy all the produce we can possibly handle. Something tells me I’ve been had. Still, there’s no better way to get your hands on a tomato like you had when you were a kid.

We believe what we want to believe. I’ve read a lot of atheists vs. the faithful tracts these past two years, and it has finally sunk in: These two groups don’t live in the same universe. They live in parallel ones that overlap, so do yourself a favor. Whichever one you’re in, they don’t speak your language in the other one. Not worth it to try and convert the savages.

On that note, disce pati.