In the Crannies and the Nooks, There Are Books to Buy

There’s always something. There’s always some goddamn thing that wrecks my plan to get rid of more books each year than I bring in. (Other than my own lack of willpower, which is manifested both by my inability to stop going into bookstores so frequently and by my all-too-frequent willingness to drop a buck or two on just about anything.) Last year it was Borders going out of business, but I really was doing well this year. Before this past weekend, I had bought all of two books so far in 2012. (I don’t count literary magazines, whether I should or not.)

Then we went to the Benton House Book Sale last Saturday. Amy was looking for some books for Jackson and, well, like I’ve said, I don’t have to be talked into these things. Jockamo and Lazy Daze are two of the collection points for the donations that make this book sale work, and I’ve perused the contents of those collection boxes at various times, while waiting either for pizza or coffee. I was sort of hoping, based on what I had seen in those collection boxes, that I would be as unimpressed by the rest of the books at the sale as I was by the ones I got to see beforehand, stuffed into shopping bags and shipping cartons and whatnot. (Either way, it was certainly worth at least a look.)

Alas. You put enough books together in one place, and spend enough time looking at them, and invariably you can spot a monkey reading a copy of Hamlet on the floor under a table in the back corner. Or no...wait...it would have to be your bull. Anyway...I was going along just fine until I came to a pocket paperback copy of Gone with the Wind that was both well bound and in pretty good shape. I normally cast aspersions on pocket paperback books, for reasons that mostly have to do with how cheaply they are made and how hard they are to read. (At least, they’re usually hard for me to read. The print is often fairly small, and I don’t have the best eyes in the world to begin with. Unfortunately, this seems to be getting worse as I get older.)

This one was in good shape, though. The pages fell open nicely, and the binding was not cracked, or even slightly creased, and felt solid enough in my hands that I was confident it would remain that why while the book was under my care. However, it was only one book, and even though it was a (relatively) nice one, it was something I could pass up. I have never read Gone with the Wind, and it’s one of those that I hope to get around to reading one of these days; but that’s what libraries are for—to hold the books you want to get around to eventually until the day comes when you finally get around to them. If it had been something I felt reasonably sure I would want either to read again or to keep forever, then that would have been something different.

The next thing that I picked up and found intriguing was a Modern Library trade paperback copy of The Count of Monte Cristo. It’s not something I’ve ever felt a burning desire to read, and I already have something by its author on my shelves (The Three Musketeers); but the Modern Library edition closed the deal. Modern Library editions are extremely well made trade paperbacks, with long introductions, often by other authors who have some sort of connection to the work they are introducing (such as Michael Cunningham introducing The Voyage Out, Arthur C. Clarke introducing The War of the Worlds, and Michael Crichton introducing The Lost World). The copy was not in very good shape, with a badly rolled spine and some discoloration on the pages; but it was not precisely in bad shape, either, and its Modern Library-ness made up for the other deficiencies.

At this point, I was considering two books I could easily have passed on; but I kept looking around anyway, because it’s places like that where you find the gems that both surprise and delight you. The gem for me, in this case, was a very fine trade paperback copy of The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño. Somebody out there is going to read this and think that Bolaño is overhyped, and they might be right; but I would disagree, mostly because I thought 2666 was great, but also because he is outspoken in his non-fiction and because his poetry can be a little bit dirty. He would be nearly as popular if he were still alive, but his untimely passing, at the age of fifty, pretty much cemented his status as a rock star. Now that I have a complete collection of the work of Richard Yates, Bolaño is the author I hoard when I find him in clearance bins and book sales.

There was no way I was going to pass up the Bolaño novel, so I went back and got the other two books I had been looking at, too. I maybe should have stopped there, but then I would not have found a hardcover copy of Stephen King’s Skeleton Crew, an early collection of his short stories. I wasn’t entirely sure I did not already have that book, but I grabbed it anyway. I checked the Stephen King bookcase when I got home, and sure enough, no Skeleton Crew. (Yes, I have a whole bookcase, of the three-shelf sort, with nothing but Stephen King books in it—and it’s overflowing.) I also picked up a copy of an old issue of Granta, and by that point it was well beyond time for me to leave. Amy and Jackson had long since paid for their purchases and exited the sale. I dropped a whopping $2.50 on my four books and one magazine, and in one fell swoop undid the modest progress I had made this year in reducing my literary inventory. I suppose there’s always next year...

Deep Thoughts #89

Funny how Michael Moore’s films are one-sided polemics, but 2016: Obama’s America is for the open-minded people who care about this country.

To Go and Paint Big Cities

I was all set to defend my liberal position, supporting President Obama for re-election, at the family reunion Amy roped me into going to yesterday—but then the discussion at our table never precisely turned to politics, and that was actually okay with me. I don’t pay enough attention anymore to hold my own very well in arguments with people who live and breathe this kind of thing. Once upon a time, I maybe could have done that; but not anymore. I’ll be glad to explain why I plan to vote for this or that person, but going back and forth with people who only want you to admit that they are right (even when they are not), is excruciating. I get enough of that shit at the old juke joint; I sure as hell don’t need to suffer it on my off time.

Used to be, when Amy would rope me into family things like that, I would just sit there quietly, and bite my tongue if something was said that rubbed me the wrong way. I never got out of that habit, even while I continued to self-identify as both conservative and Republican—which (to paraphrase George Carlin) I did, until I reached the age of reason. Yesterday, though, I didn’t even have to bite my tongue. The strongest thing said, vis à vis politics, was that Mitt Romney was “much better than Obama.” I disagree with that statement, but it’s not something that can be proven one way or the other—it’s just someone’s opinion.

Know when I did bite my tongue and should not have done? It was when I was asked about writing, and was I writing a novel? Well, yes, I am. Is it a horror story? Well, no, not so much. I know damn good and well what I am writing about, and largely how it’s all going to come together at the end—and yet I ran flat out into an epic fail when asked about it, even at this late date. WHY? Why can’t I just look a person in the eye and tell them that I am writing a novel in three parts about time (college), place (Irvington), and history (the Mafia)? Because I am ashamed of the fact that it took me this fucking long to figure out that I need to write about all three of those things, and that I can actually get them all into one novel?

When I started writing, which is going on twenty years ago now, I knew that I wanted to write about college, because that freshman year affected me deeply (fallin’ back on that ass, with a hellafied gangsta lean); Irvington was tangential for the first half of my life, but then in short order became both important to it and inextricable from it; and the Mafia...well...I mean, the Mafia doesn’t really exist, does it? Even if it does (wink wink, nudge nudge), my dad refuses to talk to me about it, so I’m just going to have to make that part up. (Yep, I got family issues on both sides, baby.) That part of this novel is what I plan to work on during this year’s National Novel Writing Month. I began the first part, the college part, during NaNo last year, and have been working with it since then, trying to get it right.

I’m not ashamed that it has taken me so long to get to this place. I’m a little bit disappointed, mostly with myself, but I’m not ashamed. What’s uncomfortable is trying to explain my work to people I don’t really know, people I have trained myself not to talk to. Habits are hard to break. I told myself yesterday before the family reunion that I would talk if someone asked—but that I wasn’t going to turn whatever I had to say in favor of one person into a backhanded attack on someone else. That’s what passes for restraint, I suppose; but no one asked. That might have been because I chose to leave my backpack, the one with the three Obama buttons pinned to it, in the car. Change takes time, and requires patience.

Deep Thoughts #88 - Special Topical Nuh-Uh Edition

The blame for the negative presidential campaign should go to the ignorant voters who respond to it, not to the candidates who engage in it.

Jackson Goes to School

Today was Jackson's first day of school, at Theodore Potter Elementary School, a Spanish Immersion magnet school in IPS. Their school, in the Cottage Home neighborhood, is undergoing renovation this year, so they are being temporarily housed in the former Frederick Douglass school on Pleasant Run Parkway, just down the street and around the corner from the Pleasant Run Trail and the grimy part of Fountain Square. Amy and I both took the day off so we could both take him to school and pick him up—and I actually managed to get some of the pictures I took this morning posted to my photos site.

Why Aren't We Flying? Because Getting There is Half the Fun. You Know That.

This past Saturday, we attended the Middle Eastern festival at St. George Orthodox Christian Church, and as we tucked in to eat, I noticed the following on the back of the menu handout we were given at the admission gate: Watch for the Middle Eastern Festival in 2014 at our new location in Fishers. St. George Orthodox Church will NOT hold a Festival in 2013 because of our relocation. Follow our news at www.MEFestival.org.

Super. Yet another instance of something nice in Indianapolis fleeing to the exurbs. We’ve only been attending the Middle Eastern Festival for a few years now, in part because we had stopped attending the Greek Festival, at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, when that congregation decamped for newer digs in Carmel. Their church was repurposed, and I hope that something similar happens to the St. George church (though its location at 40th and Sherman is not quite as desirable as the former location of the Greek Orthodox Church, at 40th and Pennsylvania).

I don’t remember, exactly, how we came to start going to the Greek Festival every year—but it was some combination of hearing about it from my mom and a burgeoning interest, for both Amy and myself, in Greek food; and getting there, as they say, was half the fun. The church was at 40th and Pennsylvania, and if you didn’t get there early, you could pretty much count on parking several blocks away and walking. We both love to walk, so that was never an issue; and it was always nice to look at the big, expensive houses along Pennsylvania Street (the church is in the southwest corner of the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood).

The Greek Festival was always packed, and it was often difficult to maneuver in the relatively small space that was set up for the festival behind the church. You would spend most of your time standing in line for food, and then standing in line to get pastries on your way out. There was dancing and music and church tours and an Athenian marketplace, and it was all very lovely and expensive. It was one of the first festivals we attended on a regular basis, and it was a good introduction to the world of summer festivals in Indianapolis. We gave it up when they moved to Carmel. It would not have been much fun to get there, and I’m not big on the pretension of the affluent. Also, their mayor, Jim Brainard, is batshit fucking crazy. There are roundabouts everywhere up there, and they would rather you do something about your vinyl or aluminum siding, instead of just letting it sit there on your house looking, you know...urban.

We had always known about the Middle Eastern Festival, but we had never attended it. There was no particular reason for that, I don’t think—and there are just too many festivals to get to them all, especially with my work schedule. I guess if I’m being honest, the location was part of it—40th and Sherman is within shouting distance of what is known as the Meadows (which isn’t quite the same as the Griswolds taking the wrong exit trying to cross the river in St. Louis, but it might be close). After we lost the Greek Festival, we decided to finally give the Middle Eastern Festival a shot—and wished almost immediately that we had tried it out sooner. It might well have replaced the Greek Festival before those pinheads did their part to contribute to urban sprawl.

The only thing the Greek Festival had that the Middle Eastern Festival didn’t have was that long walk down Pennsylvania Street so you could look at the fancy houses. (At 40th and Sherman, there are no fancy houses.) In its place, the Middle Eastern Festival has this quaint little thing called “parking.” Everything else at the Middle Eastern Festival is better: the food is just as good, and it’s less expensive; there are practically no lines for food (or, at least, there have never been significant lines for food any of the times we have been); and the line for pastries, though there is one, isn’t nearly like standing in line for pastries at the Greek Festival. The Middle Eastern Festival also has dancing and music; and an indoor marketplace (though not an Athenian one, obviously). They also have a silent auction and a small bookstore.

But now it’s going away, too. Like I said, though, there are tons of festivals in and around the city, so it won’t be like we suddenly have nothing to do in the summer. And I’m not really disappointed that a church is moving so that its metastasizing congregation has more room to sit when they do their congregating on Sunday mornings. Most of the time I’m completely indifferent to churches and the things they do—and I’m entirely indifferent, 100% of the time, to what they’re trying to sell; but every now and then they manage to do something of interest to the greater community, and that was the niche occupied by both the Greek Festival and the Middle Eastern Festival. I’ll miss those festivals, but there are plenty of other festivals, right here in the city. There is almost no valid reason ever to enter Hamilton County; patronizing a festival that supports people who decided to skip town just because it got a little crowded certainly does not pass muster.

Deep Thoughts #87

Not only do the In God We Trust monkeys drive like morons, they also give money to the off-ramp panhandlers. Locusts for $200, please, Alex?

Deep Thoughts #86

I would not have guessed that the first place in town where I would see electric vehicle charging stations would be the Greenwood Park Mall.

Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Co.

Jackson, of course, only ever wants to eat chicken; and when I say chicken, I mean those chopped and formed and breaded and fried bits of chicken, which I suppose are probably technically meat, but which may or may not stand up to rigorous scientific inquiry. I had the rare Monday off last week, but since it was so hot out, we didn’t have a real plan for the day. Usually, we’ll go grab lunch somewhere close to whatever the plan for the day—which generally involves something to do outdoors—is going to be, but last week we were just sort of flying blind. We finally vaguely decided on Thai, and made our way toward Broad Ripple.

We had noshed at Thai Café before, but since we rolled up there without checking first, we did not know that they were not open on Monday. We took our chances and left the car where it was, and started walking toward the village, though not at all sure what we were going to try. Then we saw the “Kids Eat Free on Monday” sign in the window at Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Company; and though it seemed a little bit counterintuitive that a place with Brewing in its name would cater to kids, we liked the idea of being able to get a free lunch for Jackson, so we took a chance and went in. (And since it was served by the same parking lot as Thai Café, we were in no danger of having the car towed.)

Nothing here that you haven’t seen before, since bar and grill places are a dime a dozen in this town. Thr3e Wise Men is an offshoot of Scotty’s Brewhouse, and it’s the space where the eponymous Scotty chose to stake out a brewery, so that he could serve his own beer alongside other local and national offerings at his restaurants. It exists in the space that was briefly the Sunflower Market, and it’s got pretty much everything you would expect from a brewpub, except for an especially interesting menu. This is partly by design, according to Scotty’s website, because the place mostly exists to make beer; but he also wanted it to be a place where people could go to eat, so there are a few things for those on solid foods—but the choices are mostly pizza and wings, along with a smattering of appetizers, sandwiches, and salads.

They’re not reinventing the wheel here, although it’s a little bit cool that one of the dessert offerings is an elephant ear crafted from their pizza dough; and they are to be commended for serving up local coffee from Hubbard & Cravens, as well as Pepsi products from their fountain. Most of the meat that they serve on their sandwiches and pizzas is sourced locally, too—including smoked chicken from Smoking Goose, which is also featured on a few pies at Jockamo (and is incredibly delicious). The downside is that everything on the menu (except for that elephant ear) is food that you have eaten before.

I had the lunch special, which lets you mix and match any two of the following: personal one-topping pizza, breadsticks, stuffed breadsticks, or small chop salad. The cheese and onion pizza, which was clearly handmade, was long on cheese, but not so much on sauce; and it could have used another minute or two in the oven or under a broiler. Maybe you trust pizza that isn’t a little bit browned and bubbly on top. I feel for you. The breadsticks, like the pizza dough, were very light and airy, and probably helped along by the pepperoni with which they were stuffed. This might have been the first pizza place I’ve ever eaten at where they used yeast for flavor as well as for leavening.

Amy also had the lunch special, but she got the other two choices—the small chop salad and the non-stuffed breadsticks. She gave the breadsticks to Jackson, to go with his cheese pizza, and made do for herself with the salad and the goat cheese and marinara appetizer we got to split. I don’t recall that she had anything in particular to say about the salad one way or the other, other than that it contained goat cheese, which we both agree is never a bad thing. The goat cheese and marinara appetizer was much more marinara than it was goat cheese, and the bits of bread for dipping were explosively dry. All that extra marinara, however, worked well to augment the dearth of sauce on the pizza.

Some of the brews they offer looked interesting, but I’m not much of a beer-with-lunch/dinner kind of guy, especially when we’re going out to eat. I would not mind to try a Hubbard & Cravens Porter one of these days, but I’m not going to lose any sleep waiting for that day to come. I’m also not going to lose any sleep wondering when I will get to eat at Thr3e Wise Men again. There was nothing wrong with it, but it’s not a place that inspired immediate longings for a return visit. I would have to be in or near Broad Ripple, in the mood for bar and grill food, and not interested in trying one of the many other bar and grill places in Broad Ripple that I hadn’t tried before. The chances of an unexceptional place like Thr3e Wise Men running that kind of gauntlet are pretty much astronomical.

1021 Broad Ripple Avenue
255-5151
www.thr3ewisemen.com

We Already Have a George

I keep having these ideas for things that I want to write about, and then when it comes time to start writing each night, I work on the long Irvington novel I have been wanting to write for awhile now and which I kick-started last November by forcing myself to work on it during National Novel Writing Month. And every now and again I think that I should maybe work one of these longer posts up into an actual non-fiction essay and submit to some literary magazine or other. I usually don’t have that thought for very long (and am, in fact, well aware that it is some kind of delusion of grandeur).

My half-baked thought for today is that I wish I had left Barnes & Noble for last, like I usually do when we go to Bloomington. Hot on the heels of that thought, though, is that we did everything ass-backwards today. We ate before we went to Bloomington. What the hell is that? If there’s even the slimmest possibility that a trip to Bloomington could be in the offing, then lunch or dinner—in Bloomington—becomes part of that equation. I don’t remember the last time we went to Bloomington and didn’t eat there. But Amy’s been clambering for Indian food lately, so we swung by a place on the south side called the Clay Oven.

And then I drove into town the wrong way and parked on the wrong side of campus—because I wanted to reconnoiter the construction on the bypass to see if going by the bookstore later in the day was going to be a bad idea, adding rush hour traffic to the cluster fuck going on at the intersection of College Mall Road, 3rd Street, and the bypass. The construction looks finished from 17th almost all the way around to 10th Street, but you can’t turn toward campus onto 10th Street, and it’s still pretty much a war zone from 10th Street south to the mall. I decided to go ahead and pop in at Barnes & Noble so that it would be out of the way.

I was hoping to find the new issue of n+1, which the stores in greater Indianapolis have stopped carrying—surprise!—and to see what else they had in the way of literary magazines. Lately it seems as though the Bloomington branch of Barnes & Noble is about the best place there is to look for literary magazines (other than on the magic internets), but even their selection isn’t much to write home about. However, they did have the new n+1, which I gobbled up; and I also got the Athlon pro football preview book, just on a lark. There’s a story on Andrew Luck, and also one on Peyton Manning in Denver, both of which should be interesting.

And then I parked on the wrong side of campus. We almost always park somewhere west of Indiana Avenue, usually on 4th Street or 7th Street; but today I just sidled up to a spot on Union Street, alongside the gigantic new residence hall they built by demolishing a good chunk of Ashton Center (including the Center Building, where I spent many an evening in the dishroom, but not Hershey Hall, where I lived as a freshman). It was nice to hit those old Ashton Center stomping grounds again, which we don’t always get to when we park on the other side of campus. Then we went over to the Union, where I found a copy of the student literary magazine (distribtued gratis) in a little rack that was hidden off to the side inside the Starbucks they built inside the Union.

Then we went downtown. We were having a nice trip to Bloomington, which the last several had not been, and I wanted to walk around the courthouse square to see if any new places had popped up since last we had really been down to look around; but then we got to the corner of Kirkwood and Walnut, in front of the Trojan Horse, and I looked across Kirkwood and saw the little book shop called Book Corner. I am positive I never went in there once when I was a student, and I am pretty sure that I have only been in there once in the time since I was a student. I don’t think this affinity for literary magazines had struck the last time I was in, because I’m sure that, had it done, I would have remembered that they have a great selection of literary magazines.

Instant buyer’s remorse, of course. They had the new issue of n+1 that I had already bought at Barnes & Noble, and I stood there for a few seconds staring at it numbly on the rack at Book Corner. In the backpack on my shoulders was something I had bought at a chain bookstore when I could have had the very same thing—for the very same price—at this independent place; and I should have known better, because I knew the Book Corner store was there. I didn’t look for the Athlon pro football book, because it doesn’t matter if they carry that kind of thing or not. I’m not always in the market for that one, and it only comes out once a year, anyway. What I did also look for was Film Comment—which they had. They did not have the Indiana Review or New Letters, which Barnes & Noble had, but both places had Zoetrope All-Story, Poetry, Glimmer Train, and the Paris Review. Book Corner also had the Georgia Review, the Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Verse, the Baffler, and a handful of other things that I can’t recall right now right off the top of my head.

Some things you just learn the hard way, I guess. I’ll take some small measure of comfort in the fact that by buying n+1 at Barnes & Noble this time, I voted there with my dollars, and let them know that there is at least a little bit of interest in that magazine. I do wish, though, that I had left Barnes & Noble for last, like I usually do. Then I would not have already bought the magazine when I popped into Book Corner, and I could have voted with my dollars there, which would have been much more satisfying. I’m already thinking ahead to my next trip down to Bloomington, and hoping that the floodgates don’t open so wide that I drop an obscene amount of money—though the temptation to do so is going to be considerable.

Jackson Goes to the Movies

I hadn’t planned on going to see my first movie in a theatre in I don’t even know how long the very day after finishing The Good, the Bad, and the Godawful: 21st Century Movie Reviews, by Kurt Loder. (Yes, that Kurt Loder.) But it was a little bit too hot and humid for a walkabout after Amy and Jackson got back from Vacation Bible School at their church; neither of us had pressing needs at any of the various emporiums around town; and then Amy floated, once again, the idea of taking little Jackson to his very first movie ever. It was inevitable, of course, that this day would come; and it was inevitable, too that this would be one fatherly duty I would not somehow be able to shirk, given that one of the few things I’m any good at is getting things for free at the big movie store.

It’s not exactly that I’m averse, on principle, to taking my son to the movies. It has more to do with the fact that he just has so much energy that I have never really believed that he could sit still for an amount of time that gets anywhere near two hours. He also doesn’t do quiet very well, and I’ve worked in the damn fool exhibition industry for long enough to have developed a strong disdain for those who bring to the movies kids they know damn good and well aren’t going to be able to comport themselves in a manner approaching that which is appropriate. There is some latitude with a kid’s movie, of course, but Jackson ain’t never been what you would call docile.

And there was also the possibility of an automatic out—there not being a show time that would be convenient for us. We don’t plan these kinds of things, even when it’s just the two of us trying to find something to go see on those rare occasions when we have time alone together and nothing better to do. But wouldn’t you know—when I called the recording for Glendale, at around two this afternoon, there was a 2D Madagascar 3 at 2:45, which gave us plenty of time to get all of our truck together and get on up there.

Would you believe that it worked like a charm? We got there with time to spare, so that when the cashier fumbled my employee discount card—yes, there is an employee discount card (would that Brent Spiner, in full hillbilly mode, could have been the one to hand it to me when the program launched)—there was still no chance that we were going to miss the start of the film. We even got to watch some of the fancy intermission slides, with trivia questions and everything. (The answer to one of the questions was Jim Jarmusch, and though I missed the question, I paused while walking to my seat and just gaped at the screen. I’m not all that familiar with the Glendale clientele, but I would hazard a guess that only a very small percentage of them would know the answer to a trivia question that required them to know anything at all about Jim Jarmusch.)


The movie wasn’t even that bad. (I had planned for this post to be both a review of the film and a comment on taking Jackson to his first movie, but it turns out that I have run at the mouth long enough for it to be just the Jackson comment.) I sort of wish I had known beforehand that Jessica Chastain’s voice was featured in the film, but that might just have resulted in an awkward moment in medias res wherein I declared to my wife my abiding love for Jessica Chastain, which would have been all kinds of awkward. An even better surprise was that the film was co-written by Noah Bamubach (my wife already knows how much I adore Noah Baumbach’s wife).

An actual review of the film may yet be forthcoming; and I got a few pictures of Jackson inside the auditorium, though I haven’t looked at them yet because the battery in my camera died and takes forever to recharge. Those pics may eventually be forthcoming, too.

(Note: Apparently Noah Baumbach and the wife of his to whom I was referring have split up. I have no idea who he may have bagged since the split, so in case there's some question as to the wife of his whom I adore, I was totally talking about Jennifer Jason Leigh.)

Deep Thoughts #85

I think George Carlin would have loved the cultural shift—one word, one syllable to two words, four syllables—from mall to lifestyle center.

Jackson Turns 5

I know...this can't go on forever. Eventually he's going to quit letting me take so many pictures of him. He's also eventually going to be a teenager, which is going to suck out loud. But at this point, he's still pretty cute, and still mostly a good boy—so here we go.

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Deep Thoughts #84 - Rising Falling at Force Ten

I’m going to go ahead and assume that Jann Wenner is not the second person who voted in my little poll about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Jackson Races the Cheetah Again

And once again, he loses. This video is a little bit better than the last one I posted. Seems I can't quite get enough of posting videos of Jackson racing the cheetah. There are, naturally, lots of photos from today's trip to the zoo; and, also naturally, I plan to post some of them to my photo site once I have them curated. (But then again, that's what I always say.)

Best. Bumper Sticker. Ever. #5

So we’re heading home from the Central Library this afternoon and while going south down East Street, pull in behind this car with a bunch of bumper stickers on it—also a Kentucky license plate and an Avon advertisement tattooed to the back window (though neither of these things probably means anything at all); and one of those bumper stickers is:

The person—and Darwin as my witness, I swear I could not tell from that distance whether it was a man or a woman in the driver’s seat—had two opportunities to use their turn signals before we parted ways. The person managed to signal their turn from East Street to New York Street, but not their lane change somewhere between East and LaSalle. One out of two for a person who went to the trouble to apply a bumper sticker exhorting others to use their turn signals.

The person also had a Rand Paul for Senate sticker on the same bumper, along with a number of stickers alluding to tree hugging, dirt worshipping, and that sort of thing—so it’s possible that they might just have been a lunatic. (And yes, I suppose it does go without saying that anyone who supports any of the political Paul family would pretty much have to be batshit fucking crazy anyway.)

Deep Thoughts #83

Another “amazing” achievement for Dario Franchitti: a third win at Indianapolis; and he coasted to all three of those wins under the yellow.

The Color of Right

"Gravity and distance change the color of right." —Rush, "The Color of Right"

Yes, he may have come out—so to speak—and said it only because his Vice President couldn’t keep his yap shut (not that keeping his yap shut has ever been Joe Biden’s strong suit); but the fact remains that President Obama did state publicly that he believes that gays and lesbians should be able to marry. He could have backtracked it; he could have hedged his bets (which he sort of did, but not really); he could have distanced himself from it by saying that Vice President Biden had been expressing his own opinion, not the opinion of the Obama administration or anyone else in it; or he could easily have repeated the flaccid statements he has made in the past, leaning on the crutch of his religion in order to defend an indefensible position.

But the President did none of those things (except sort of hedge his bets—which is, like, totally unusual for a politican to do). He stood up and said what he thought, even though it’s still not an overwhelmingly popular position; and he did so just as his campaign for re-election is getting underway. Regardless of what you think of the guy personally or politically, I think it’s difficult to look at what he did and not admit that it’s a risky thing to do in an election year. I keep reading that most people in this fading republic support gay marriage, but that seems optimistic to me. Maybe it’s just that I’m seated here in Indiana, an overwhelmingly rural and ignorant state.

I don’t know if publicly supporting gay marriage helps the President in his bid for a second term or not. I seem daily to be getting more and more disillusioned with politics and politicians. Most politicians spend far too much time (and money) trying to get elected again, and not nearly enough time doing things that warrant their having been elected in the first place—never mind genuinely impressive things that are also the right thing to do.

Supporting gay marriage is absolutely the right thing to do. I completely agree with the Comment piece in last week’s issue of The New Yorker, which calls gay marriage an “historic inevitability.” I’m not sure whether it matters if President Obama made his public statement for political gain or not, because I’m not sure that there can be a wrong reason for doing the right thing. (I bet there probably is some technical argument for why, philosophically, it’s bad to do the right thing for the wrong reason—but that doesn’t change the inherent rightness of the thing in question.) Elections are an ugly, messy business in this fading republic; and they so often produce lies and distortions that serve no one but ignorant voters who can’t be bothered to pay attention to anything longer than a thirty-second television ad.

Even if it was only for political gain—and it most definitely was not only for political gain—then President Obama’s public statement on gay marriage is at least something good and right that came out of an election campaign. It’s not an attack on anyone else—just an expression of one man’s feelings. It’s strong, courageous leadership from an awfully good President.

Deep Thoughts #82

Three years’ worth of marching band in high school apparently is not enough to make up for what a disappointing, liberal piece of shit I am.

Deep Thoughts #81

Jeremiah Wright was not important four years ago, and he is not important now. It’s just another non-issue for rural simpletons to dry hump.