No time to blog. Getting married tomorrow. What the fuck, huh?

Bren Mead and I just bonded over the Beach Boys. He's my next door neighbor. I like to go over there and bug them about stuff. I'm not sure if they're tired of me yet. It was a lot more fun to hang out with him than cleaning up the house. I am such a procrastinator.

I slept the sleep of logs last night. I don't even remember what I wrote and I'm not going to go back and read it. I have to clean up the house now.

Vaughn chastised me for not writing about my impending wedding (this weekend!) and rightfully so. I've avoided writing about it because, well, it almost seems to be too big a concept for me to accurately express in this weblog format. I wish I could tackle the subject with a jocular, homey Jean Shephard style or the feel of a David Foster Wallace Rolling Stone piece or something, but I have a feeling it's all going to end up like King's Things in USA Today: non-sequiters and ellipses. Here's a list of random thoughts:

Weddings are fucking expensive. Sample: it costs $500 to hang a chandelier inside the outdoor tent where a bulk of the festivities will be held. When Courtnie asked me if we should hang two, I think I told her (maybe only in my head) that she was "out of her goddamned mind." I'm pretty sure she didn't heed my advice. I want to say that as a truly half-assed ex-Socialist, I abhor all of the needless expense surrounding this one day event. Which brings me to...
It is only one day, but it's one day out of your whole entire life (hopefully), and it really isn't "guy's day." For whatever reason (and I don't really want to analyze the feminist ramifications of this peculiar socialization), women (straight and lesbian?) have been looking forward to this day for, like, their whole lives, so guys are pretty marginalized in the whole marriage process. I didn't get any "showers." My bachelor party is being touted as the second coming when I know, in fact, that it only holds the empty promise of some sort of feeble bacchanaliac ritual whereby I pass from singledom to marriagedom. We all know I whipped into submission years ago. Anyway, marriage isn't for the guys. It's all for the women, and you know what? That's great. Women get shut out of all types of rituals and rites of passage and stuff by men.
I'm exhausted. I barely slept last night, but not out of anxiety and nervousness. No...I was too tired to sleep. I have so much stuff to do, and I'm so stressed out, and my stress level is probably 1/10 of Courtnie's. She's a whirling dervish of energy and planning, while I bitch about not being able to find my copy of Sticky Fingers. She's done so much for this thing while she was student teaching that I can't believe I ever complained to her about smelling like diesel fuel after work. She's pretty patient, all things considered.
This semester has been unbelievably stressful for us, and our relationship has been strained at times, but never to the breaking point. I had a bout with inadequacy (not like that!) mid-autumn where I thought anything derogatory that came out of her mouth meant we were breaking up. I'm not nervous now, but I was nervous then. It's pretty amazing to be with someone who loves you, despite your messiness. I know that she does, and those feelings have been confirmed over and over this year. It feels the best when you're going to sleep at night, realizing that you're going to be waking up with the same person in the morning, and I don't know...it feels really sappy to say it, but I love this woman more than anything. I don't know what I did before, and it's like my mind has retroactively implanted her into my memories, pre-Courtnie. Anne Gutendorf? Gone! Michele Aspinall? History! All of them replaced by Courtnie. Our relationship makes all of these old problems seem ludicrous. I view these previous dalliances with supercilious disdain. I can't believe I ever let myself get so fucked up over past relationships. I think the fact that I didn't see much action in Athens helped clear my mind. When the big one hit it was like a wallop over my head, saying "don't fuck this up." And you know what? I don't think I could have fucked it up. It seemed perfect from the beginning. It seemed right.
I'm so tired that I'm dozing off at the computer. This thing reads like the ramblings of a lunatic, but I know I don't have syphillis 'cause the blood test told me, so it can't be that. I just need to get some sleep so's I'm not sick for the wedding.
Courtnie and I occasionally look at each other and shake our heads and exclaim, "Can you fucking believe it? We're getting married!" as if it was something that just happened, like winning the lottery (which is an entirely apropos analogy). I mean, I'm getting MARRIED. That is so fucked up.
I wish I something more pithy to say to you, Vaughn, but I don't right now. It's heartburn medicine and counting sheep for me right now.

Cool!

Urgh. Went to Outback Steakhouse last night for a company Christmas party and ate way too much fattening, fried, bad-for-me food. A week before the wedding and I think I gained six pounds!

Oh, how I ache! I couldn't even enjoy myself at a Christmas party last night because I was so achy and tired. Did I spell "achy" right? Is that a real word or did Billy Ray Cyrus just make it up?

The Star Wars Holiday Special put a hurt on me like nothing I have ever seen. It's punishing. I've seen it before, but I think my mind had represed the earlier memories of it, like you'd repress memories of, say, the Vietnam War or the band Saigon Kick.

This here is shorter than the Star Wars Holiday Special, but just as punishing. Fairly topical considering the Two Towers' impending release. Thanks to Scott Wilson for it.

I just went to the Pendergrass Flea Market in Jefferson, GA, and bought a copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special for $10! Shitté.

Phew! Still trying to get my breath back!

Just ran a 5K race at the urging of my former co-workers at Team Clermont. I did it in 33:15 which sucks for a normal person, but is 2:30 better than last year's time! We do this every year as some sort of strange masochistic ritual to prove to ourselves how out of shape we are. I had to pee the whole time.

Courtnie's gone for a few days, taking a break before the wedding. Only a week to go! Scary but excitin'.

Wow! The DOT is tightening SUV gas mileage efficiency regulations. Those thirsty giants of the road will have increase fuel efficiency by a gallon and a half per mile by 2007. Let 'em have it, NHTSA!

Whoopty-fuckin'-do. A gallon and a half? They might as well tell people to drive slower. If you think you need an SUV, you probably don't. Consider a stationwagon. They're more fuel efficient and they don't tip over. Do you know anybody, Scott Wilson aside, who uses their SUV for "sport?" Remember when they were ORVs? Off-Road Vehicles? They changed that name to sell more of them, I'd reckon.

"ORV...bullet holes..."

Scandal!

William Karp wrote this piece in 1985, but it seems just as accurate today, if not more so. We must wrestle control of public education away from today's rhetoric and the "back to the basics" movement, which has nothing to show for itself but 25 years of failure and misplaced blame. Note that one of the thinkers figured prominently in the article is conservative, New Right-ist Diane Ravitch, so this is not just a liberal/conservative issue.

This is essential reading.

Stove Top stuffing. Is there nothing it can't do? I think I'm gonna eat a whole boxful. Wish me luck.

Mary Hansen from Stereolab died the other day. Needless to say, that sucks. I wasn't a huge fan of the last couple of Stereolab records, but I always preferred Mary's voice to Laetitia's, even though she wasn't the main singer. I wonder if the band will continue...it seems to me that it's pretty much Tim Gaines and Co., so I guess they'll go on without her. She wasn't an original member, but I thought she was pretty essential as the years went on. She was an awesome guitarist, too. I think I'm gonna go listen to some Stereolab records. Oh, I can't...Courtnie's asleep.

Thank Thank God! Did anyone think that this guy should have stayed in his position? No wonder the Catholic church is going bankrupt. No one wants to give money to this playpen for pederasty. I'm disgusted by the whole thing, and I'm not even Catholic.

Internet went down right in the middle of me typing something really funny/profound. It must not have been too funny or profound because now I can't remember what the hell I was typing. I really want to see the movie "Drumline."

Sorry to keep flogging a dead horse, but read this and this. Note the bottom of the former article where Lott tries to paint support of segregation as a states' rights issue. I'm so sick and tired of that garbage--it's okay to substitute states' rights in place of race and slavery in the discourse of big historical events, notably the Civil Rights Movement and the Civil War. "It wasn't about race...it was about states rights!" Ooooh, I get it! I've got another good one for you then: "See, there are niggers and then there are black people!" It's called rationalization, folks.

A few new commercials I hate: the new Gap Christmas commercial (what happened to the artsy good ones of years past?) and the Gateway "beat poetry chick" commercial where that girl says "My way.........for the highway." I hate that commercial, and I hate her.

Wow! The ball is really rolling on this Trent Lott thing. Finally. I guess these things take time. David pointed out to me that the Lott story was front-page in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger today. Took 'em a while, didn't it?

An open invitation for piracy: Does someone out there have a link to downloadable versions of Microsoft Word/Office for Mac Os 9 or before? I don't really care if I steal from Microsoft...wait, do you think they read this blog?

I have a zit coming on strong right between the eyebrows. It's big, but it's deep. I can feel it growing by the minute. It's giving me a headache. I hope it doesn't mar next week's wedding pictures. I can't wait to pop it.

Strangely enough, it seems that CNN covers the Trent Lott racism story more than anybody! And Tom Daschle needs to make up his fucking mind about something/anything? (Todd Rundgren?) or he'll keep losing respect for me.

Weird night last night. Rebecca Coates is the coolest, though, and good for free pizza, so hit her up when you see her next! Heheh. Most of you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. That's good. I can turn this blog into a string of in-jokes just like half the blogs out there.

Kentucky Fried Chicken! Hahaha, do you hear me, Monica? Girl, that shit was soooo funny.

See...it's easy to be "esoteric."

Go celebrities! More grist for the talk radio world, I'd assume. Listen to Rush Limbaugh and/or Sean Hannity today and see if they don't mention it. I bet they will!

Keep those dollars rolling in...things have slowed down a bit! Don't you want to be in the Big Gray Hall of Fame?

This is from Brandon's blog, and, in my humble opinion, it's at least on par (if not far beyond) most of the punditry out there:

How al Qaeda Killed Consequentialism
Consequentialism is the view that what counts morally about an action are its consequences, and only its consequences. If two actions have the same consequences, then from a consequentialist point of view, they are morally equivalent. Pundits like Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens (among many others) have decried what they call "moral equivalence" on the left. The idea is best exemplified by the emphasis on civilian casualties in the war on terror: the idea that putatively unavoidable deaths as side-effects of a war fought to dismantle a terrorist network are morally equivalent to the deliberate murder of civilians in a terror campaign could only be held by a consequentialist.
The problem with consequentialism is that a lot of things matter morally. Intentions, for example, seem to matter, and these are the biggest missing ingredients in consequentialism. People like Peter Singer like focusing on consequences, because it necessarily bars us from considering selfish factors like nationalism or racism -- a dead person is a dead person, and a dead Afghan child is just as innocent as a dead New Yorker, and the families are just as aggrieved. The problem is that killing an Afghan child by accident in the process of a just war against a demonstrably evil organization seems obviously like it ought to be different from deliberately killing a building full of New Yorkers with precisely the aim of aggrieving their families and their countrymen.
So, the new patriotism could be a justified one -- weighing the deaths attributable to American forces against their motives, not their nationality. The difference is not arbitrary; it's sensitive to morally significant factors, namely motivation, intent, and context. So, no, the death of an Afghan child is not the moral equivalent of the death of a New Yorker -- one was the regrettable side-effect of a just campaign, the other was a direct intended consequence of a terrorist act. What's "new" about "our reality" is that it's a richer moral universe for those of us who used to be liberal consequentialists. Now we have to consider something over and above body counts.

Joe Conason says it better than I do, with considerably less profanity. Check out the Council of Conservative Citizens' website. Creepy, eh? Guess what? Trent Lott wrote a column for their newsletter! Read this article from 1998, specifically the sections about Sen. Lott.

I know you guys might get tired of my political screeds, but you owe it to yourself, as thinking human beings, liberal and conservative, to read this stuff and stop these subcreatures in their tracks.

To my Mississippi readers: Kirk Fordice spoke at a CofCC gathering...'nuff said.

One good thing about the upcoming Congress: no Jesse Helms and no Strom Thurmond. This sickens me. Trent Lott's ass-kissing of Strom Thurmond is a fucking outrage, and I don't care if Strom Thurmond "changed his ways," he's still a lecherous, do-nothing piece of shit, and I hope he fucking rots to death. Unlike Jesus, I don't believe some sins are forgivable and opposing a law against lynching is a cardinal sin in my book. Trent Lott's office said that his comments were meant as a "tribute" to a "remarkable man," and people are trying to justify his comments, but I don't buy it. When Strom ran as a Dixiecrat, he basically had one position: pro-segregation. To say that our country would have been better under a Dixicrat regime is unjustifiable and un-fucking-forgivable. Fuck Trent Lott and fuck Strom Thurmond. W. said "God bless you, Strom." This is our president, folks! Strom Thurmond is responsible for zero policy successes in office.

The Democrats have an image problem? If only the (liberal?) media would jump on this story...

To African-Americans (hate that term), this must be the equivalent of a drive-by mooning.

Fuck Strom Thurmond.

From the mainstream press, no less! Kissinger's secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia was responsible for thousands of deaths and his handling of East Timor was reprehensible. And he got rid of Allende in Chile. So of course he's the obvious choice to investigate 9/11. Think he'll let us in on any secrets he uncovers?

This sucks. Sort of strange that the courts intervened on this one. Just like they did in Florida 2000. Hmmm...

I haven't eaten today, and I'm not hungry. Weird. Maybe I have enough fat stored up and can live without eating for weeks on end. Probably so.

I watched this documentary called "Cathouse" on HBO last night (after the really powerful season finale of the Sopranos), and it just made me feel dirty. I'm all for legalized prostitution, but there was nothing really erotic about anything that took place at this "ranch" in Nevada. Between the lecherous old man owner, Airforce Amy and her weird accent and multiple orgasms, and the word "party" as a euphemism as sex, I got the notion that the whole thing was too formal and more than a little bit dorky. Give me a call girl any day of the week!

On another America Undercover note, there's one coming up about beastiality called "Animal Passions," and a lady on the trailer said "I've been with animals and I've been with humans and I love them both!" Can't wait for this one!

I'm up right now because I switched shifts with a guy at work. I am such an idiot. The shift I took is, oh, four hours longer than my usual shift (!). I need the money and all, but dammit! us part-timers aren't supposed to pull 40 hours a week.

Whine, whine, whine...my life could be a lot worse.

Trent Lott...segregationist:

"I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had of followed our lead we wouldn't of had all these problems over all these years, either."

This guy is your new/old Senate Minority Leader. Just when we get rid of Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond...

Courtnie and Phoebe are calling the newest faux ice storm (at least here in Georgia) Ice Crisis 2002, which makes me laugh every time I think about it. Once again, the local news has been swept up in sensationalism and bad metereology and predicted a winter storm around here that didn't happen. The thing is: by yesterday evening, I think, everybody knew it wasn't going to happen. But that would have meant cancelling the much vaunted round-the-clock coverage of Ice Crisis 2002. So they trot out a bunch of reporters to Atlanta's freeways to report on...rainfall. Hahaha...chumps.

I was gonna write something about the Eli Lilly Provision, but she already did it for me. Didn't Arianna Huffington used to be extremely right wing?

What can I say? I was drawn to the name!

Charlie's barking at nothing. He has been for five minutes now. It's starting to get annoying. I'm working on a paper as usual, but I wrote it a while ago, so I'm just doing some tidying up.

Have I ever mentioned my love of Daniel Schorr? Listen to this and read this. I'm reading it right now, and it's fascinating. The Murrow Boys were something else.

My donation Hall of Fame (in no particular order):
Toby Greenwalt--Email me, you punk!
Sam Hunt--Lost a leg in the War.
Emerson Dameron--One of the greatest writers I've ever had the pleasure of calling a friend.
Angie Atkinson--Check out the sexy photo!
Vaughn Sterling--Possibly the greatest singer I've ever worked with.
Carl Collier--Impeccable pop sensibilities. Actually owned an "air guitar."

Want the royal treatment? Want to get in the Big Gray Hall of Fame? Send $$$. Click on the button below.

Because a number of you asked about what happened last Thanksgiving, here's the fully story. I debated whether or not to put this up on weblog. You know, in fear that he would mysteriously find out, and things are better between us. Especially since I helped him put up Christmas lights this year.

I don't know how we got on the subject last Thanksgiving (actually the day after), but Sept. 11 invariably came up, and I mentioned that I wasn't sure the aggressive bombing in Afghanistan would have the desired effect, seeing as how many of the Al-Qaeda guys we were after, Osama included, were former Mujahadin (sp?) fighters, trained by the US, who basically defeated the Soviet army. I disagreed with the civilian loss and wondered aloud if the civilian deaths would only exacerbate our Most Hated Nation status in the Middle East (and beyond). Somehow he got from this that I wasn't sad about 9/11 or something because he said something like this: "well, I was angry too when the World Trade Center was hit and I say bomb them." Something along those lines...what he was implying with his tone of voice, though, was that I didn't give a shit; you know, liberals disagree with the war, thus they are unfeeling, sympathetic to Muslim extremism, unpatriotic, etc.

Things were getting tense in the cabin (we were up in the north GA mountains), and I think Mame was starting to cry. Mame's mom looked scared. Well, I wasn't going to sit there and take it, but I did remain pretty calm, all things considered. I pointed out to him that I was no fan of terrorism or the Taliban or the Fatah movement or anything, but that we have to consider the repercussions our actions will have when dealing with terrorism.

This is where it got rough. I couldn't have chosen a worse example. I said that Reagan was basically responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 because he ordered the bombing Libya, killing Mohammar Khadafi's daughter in the process. Libya retaliated, however indirectly, with the bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. I also drove the point home, saying that conservative pundits of the time argued that the killing of Khadafi's innocent (presumedly) daughter was justified because she would have become a terrorist anyway. Now...I have no idea where I got this statement from alleged pundits, but it somehow stuck in my head. I've never done research on it because I've been afraid that I made it all up, but I'm pretty sure I didn't. Someone else please find this information for me!

Let's flash forward to Christmas, where visiting the W_____ home (mansion?), I began to note the preponderance of Reagan memorabilia. A framed letter from Reagan. Pictures of Reagan the governor. Reagan the president. Two different Reagan books on the coffee table. Some kind of memorial Republican Party/Reagan pin. Lots of Ronald Reagan. Mr. W______ grew up in California, so needless to say, he's a big Reagan fan. I realized then what a huge mistake I had made.

Mr. W______ lost it. He yelled something about disrespecting Reagan or something and then said anybody who believed that had to get out of his house. I'm kinda proud of myself 'cause I stood my ground and said that's what I believed and I was sticking to it. Mame was crying and said that she believed the same thing, so was he going to kick her out, too? Mame's mom acted the peacemaker. There I stood, the stoic, my mind furiously turning over and over again the different scenarios that were to come from my action, quite a many of them involving a loss of teeth at the hands of Mr. W______. I've never really been one for self-preservation: Thomas Hobbes be damned.

Mame stormed upstairs and said that we were leaving, but I calmed her down, and Mr. W______ went outside. Eventually we made up over cigars and vowed never to speak of it again, that both of our positions were intractable. He thinks that Reagan is one of the great heroes of American History. I think he was the Great American Fraud. So you know, we're not going to meet in the middle any time soon. But at least he let me ask his daughter to marry me. When we had the fight, I thought I'd screwed that up forever.

Not much to talk about...running errands...ate a burrito. The usual.