I'm in a rare mood this evening. If I had to describe it, it would be part contemplative, part bemused and a good chunk mellow.

Now, I'm no big political guy, but I did manage to see about 2 minutes of the Big Presidential Debate Episode One: The Phantom Menace (basically during Milwaukee's at-bat's during the Cards rather unnerving loss at home...) and let me make some very basic observations:

1) If a candidate utters the words "global warming" everything afterwards is refuse. If anyone for one second believes any mainstream candidate gives two craps about "global warming" then there's a guy in South America with a jug of Kool-Aid with your name on it. And the fact they mention it at all means they are pandering to someone's minuscule political ideology that, as was mentioned before, they could give two craps about.

2) Hey, the Miss America Pageant got rid of the talent portion, perhaps the Debates should pick it up. Let's face it, you won't get a straight meaningful answer out of a beauty pageant contestant and you ain't a-gonna get much of one out of a politician. Might as well bust out the baton-twirling and trampoline jumping, at least then there will be another category to judge the candidates on, right? Perhaps next election we could add the evening wear and swimsuit categories (20% of the total score) and maybe a big production dance number to kick it off with. Hell, I'd watch it.

and
3) Everyone seems concerned about sending our troops mixed messages. For example, if we told them to blow up a building and kill everyone trying to protect it and then later told them to fix said building and then protect it... Wait, that came out wrong. Be pro-war or anti-war, but I seriously doubt that internal structure of the military will be thrown into confusion if a rich white man is elected to the office instead of, well, a rich white man. It's a bad argument. It's a silly argument. Silly like peeing into the wind. Silly and smelly and wet.

Anyway, I got that out of my system, now onto the other stuff. I've continued work on the as-yet-untitled sci-fi story. Maybe will even get it finished tonight. The finish line is in sight, in either case. It's been fun. It's nice to have things go well sometimes. I don't mind fighting through a chapter of something or a drum/bassline for a song or getting the dogs to do something I tell them to, but when it just kinda flows it's hard to beat. It kind of frames all the struggles and conflicts and frustrations really well. I may not have all the finer points of what I try to do nailed down, but I'm getting better and the fact that somethings are coming easier now is just proof that I'm learning to walk again. It's been a long time, and it's been ugly and bloody and bloody ugly, but it's starting to feel almost normal again.

Which brings me to the contemplative part (believe it or not, that last section was the mellow one with the debate thing being, by deduction, bemused...) I think I do this every fall, maybe it's the seasons, but I remember some of the people of my past, and usually one in particular. I think I pretty much hate her now, which is progress. Sometimes some people need to be hated, maybe not categorically, but there gets to be a point where ugliness is no longer endearing and selfishness stops being a mutual intoxication. That's almost poetic, ain't it? In either case, let us raise our glasses in remembrance of JLA (or JLS nowadays, I guess, or perhaps JLA-S, or should we just settle on WTF?) it was good, it was great, it was catastrophic in that Godzilla beating the hell out of Tokyo kinda way and, in the end, it was a past date coupon--trivial in its inception and obsolete by design.
To you JLA, go to hell and Godspeed.

-Joe