Idea log

Eugene Levy (SCTV) as Perry Como, aka DSL. @ Election Season

Much have I travell'd in the realms of utopia, and many imagined goodly states (or statelessness) and kingdoms seen.

Those travels were and are an education, especially in the souvenirs I brought home with me in the form of an indifference to political dogma of all kinds, from communism to its comic twin, laissez-faire, which latter, the shameless strumpet, did bat her lashes at me some years back.

Having no wish to save the world from its divers follies, I kept my pants on in favor of the ideological answer to pocket pool, with a catcher's mitt of a left hand to show for it.

Part of me supports all American elected officials, from the office of the President right down to me and you (me and you), though so tepidly you couldn't see that support even under an AD 2012+000 electron microscope, and for sure not with so much passion as to put me in a ballot box this side of that Race for the Whitest of White Houses in which we all, assuming sufficient mortal rectitude and posthumous Patrine payoffs Gateside just to be safe, are presumed to pull levers,  if only to staff the vacancies among the seraphim and the cherubim if not in the Presidency-for-Eternal Life of that Deorest of Deor Leaders, after that most hallowed protocol of egalitarian yeoman deocracy, One Soul, One Vote.

But another, equal part of me, equal above all in its infitesimal tepidity, opposes all American elected officials, as this is a democracy and I have the sacred right to throw the bums out should I care to lift one of my dead and as-yet unsloughed skin cells in that direction.

Thus, to take one example that, as I am running into my Steel Reserve time, will have to stand for all, regarding the "War" on (Some) "Drugs", I cheer on neither its scorched-crop Götterdämmerung of a sort that might land us all soon or late in orange jumpers after the over-euphoric aftermath of your nightly suppertime trip to the herb garden, nor a time when Babs and Junior think nothing, post-legalizing, of dropping bits from their sacks of can-return nickels on Pixy Stix "Now With Real Meth™!" Rather, I merely ask the far more elemental - or "base" - question, How on earth can I profit from it the most and the most quickly, and how much to put into bribes v ammo stores v developing my hooker ring as a countercyclical market hedge? Business is business, after all, and economic calculation is no respecter of whether you know your Friedrich Hayek from your Salma Hayek, or your average Libertarian from your lesser Liberian, or even and especially if, like me, you have long since come to far prefer both of the respective latter to both of the former.

My One-Micro-Drop Rule of it's-all-cool-though-not-enough-that-I'd-notice political "engagement" has the effect, wholly unintended to be sure as that implies passion, of alienating in one stroke all Democrats/"Blue" Staters, all Republicans/"Red" Staters, all bipartisan/nonpartisan good-government types/Purple Hazers, and all self-described apoliticals/anarchists/nihilists, &c., in the case of the last because for them the gap between their zero and my c. .00000000000001 support for presently-constituted authority is by definition more damnable than that between my point-whatever and 100% support, and in the case of the second-to-last because they will never rest until everyone votes, thus Legitimizing Democracy and Forming a More Perfect Union, brought to you, as always, by the Annenberg Foundation, the American and National Leagues of Women (But Not Men) Voters who remind you not to miss their quadrennial All-Star Game ("Presidential Debates"), Viewers Through Their Fingers Like You, the Pepe Le Pew Charitable Truss, the John D.(airy)Q.(ueen) Rockefeller Public and Catherine Tea Party Macarthur Park Adams Morgan Library and Foundation, and the Commissioner, Creme Rinse and Conditioner of Base-a-ball, without whose midnight express written consent and prenup no part of this nocturnal transmission may be reproduced in its hole or in its part that goes in the hole and then far too soon For Her Pleasure lights up in the afterglow like the guy from the Operation game's nose when you touch the tweezers to the thin aluminum walls that surround each one of the organs of the human body when diseased or until you get sick already of the damned game and decide to play Battleship or Stay Alive instead.

And speaking of ... hot buttons ... and the so-named issues of the day as they regard any incumbent President however justifiably reviled as of 12:01 ET the day after inauguration, mine revolve around such questions as What is his* family's favorite breed of dog or stick insect, his favorite food and favorite drug, his favorite books from childhood and favorite porn stars from college and the Senate?

*I look forward before long to adding "her" to "his" in the last sentence, since as a fan of biodiversity I like to discern as many varieties of deadly animal camouflage as I can, and cannot stress enough the truth of the old proverb that behind every peacock with a nuclear arsenal, on the Timeline of World Herstory, is a peahen with enough bird flu to wipe out the race in almost equal time. And as the old third-grade riddle almost put it for all time, If you're an American in the living room, what are you in the bathroom? You're a peahean, of course. 


My favorite way of opposing war and all other forms of social-engineering bureaucracy is to both reduce my income and my expenditures alike to the minimum necessary to rent a room each week and cook split pea soup each night (I could never, as long as either cheap 8.1% beer and peanut-butter-chocolate ice cream exist, manage to swing the lemon-sucking Stakhanovite - speaking of Reserves of Steel - essays in cashlessness of this guy). Though the receipts and outlays of my 309,999,999 Fallow 'Merkuns may be less than none of my concern, I take no small pleasure in the fact that my annual contribution to the federal defense budget, writ large, would enable a pretty fair fight in the event that the President decided for the most ... unimpeachable ... of reasons under an obscure dispute with the Canadians to claim Nunavut, if not necesssarily allavut. Assuming the necessary one Humvee we could under the entailed DoD budget afford were well-maintained - and with 89 octane a distinct possibility, even - I even now turn pallidly pink with patriotic pride at the merest thought of my role thus in our ongoing martial glory, for only literal pennies a serving among those serving.

In other words, I sport the troops every chance I get, and never more than during the annual Army-Navy game. 

I also spot the troops, whenever Waldo decides to re-enlist and/or to the extent I wander into the basement when my ex-Marine roommate is on his weight bench.

Regarding other among the "hot-button" issues of the day: since my bed, when I still had one, was by intention large enough for one man only, I have no "position" on "gay" "marriage" or any other matrimonial referenda that presume full-frontal nudity on the parts of the parties of both parts (or neither, in cases of accident), however charmed I am by the frequent ... insertion ... of the tag "gay-friendly" in many a Craigslist rental ad I read For Entertainment Purposes Only before wishing the posters the Best of Luck With All That.

I am also staunchly pro-Choice, although that should come as small comfort to those marching the streets of Demopolis en route to Ending Back Alleys As We Know Them, as I am also very much pro-Prime and pro-Select, and adjust the rest of my diet accordingly after the levels of fat marbling in my weekly haul from the meat counter at the Dover Fields Hannaford.

My hairfine extra-electoral equipoise extends into the realm of opinion journalism as well, where my appetite for classical drama well and truly sates itself, as The Nation under Katrina vanden Heuvel (Gambolputty de von Ausfern- schplenden- schlitter- crasscrenbon- fried- digger- dingle- dangle- dongle- dungle- burstein- von- knacker- thrasher- apple- banger- horowitz- ticolensic- grander- knotty- spelltinkle- grandlich- grumblemeyer- spelterwasser- kurstlich- himbleeisen- bahnwagen- gutenabend- bitte- ein- nürnburger- bratwustle- gerspurten- mitz- weimache- luber- hundsfut- gumberaber- shönedanker- kalbsfleisch- mittler- aucher von Hautkopft ... of Ulm) reminds me once a week that all of life really is, at bottom, a tragedy, days before and mercifully only half as often as National Review reminds me that no, it's always and everywhere comedy of the absolute first water and the bardic blood royal, and of the most sublimely "unwitty" kind at that, especially when the house dramaturges, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I mean Jay "Jes' Plain Folks Like You, Shucks" Nordlinger and Jonah "I Know You Are, But What Am I?" Goldberg, are in the front row in grimmest clench-jawed deadpan amid an opening-night house otherwise roaring, tearblind and gutsore from balustrade to balcony.