Hello. It’s been a bit. If my calculations are correct, I have not posted on here in a little over 2 weeks. You see, it all started with Ohio. I went home for a week, and was so busy running around with family and friends that I didn’t want to waste precious time wonking around on the world wide web.

But then I returned to DC. And thought I’d get back into the blogging swing of things. I’m on “vacation,” though, meaning I’m really just temporarily unemployed (soon to be re-employed, fyi, just in case you were fearing for my well-being, “you” of course being the ubiquitous imaginary blog “you”), and I found that since I had no reason to be sitting in front of a computer screen for any length of time, I felt absolutely no desire to do so. I did not write any blog posts. I did not read anybody else’s blog posts. I marked my whole RSS feed “read” and breathed a sigh of relief. I read 2 books. I started going to yoga classes. Etc. I did not do any of the fabled “real writing” I think I will do if only I’m not preoccupied with blogging, but …

Well, see, that’s actually where this story starts. I was beginning to think that maybe this incessant focus on reading and writing blogs was quite bad for me, as an, ahem, writer. Granted, I only blogged while at work, since I was an intern and had little else to do during the day. But still – I felt like I could be using that time better. But this isn’t quite where the story actually begins, either. I suppose the story actually begins in, oh, December? That is when Raee and I decided to start blogging here at yellow is the color (named such because we’re bad at names and raee really had a thing for the yellow line metro back then).

Before this, I had a Livejournal, but nobody takes Livejournal-ers seriously. And I talked to Raee about trying to make a “real blog,” and we were in grad school and high on intellectualism and low on actual responsibilities, and we decided to go for it. It was slow at first, but eventually we started getting some readers. And by this summer we were up to a couple hundred hits a day, which is still very very small, of course, but it at least felt like we were getting somewhere. People commented. People came back. And this, of course, is where the stress began.

The whole point of blogging, if you’re a hobby blogger, not a paid blogger or an advocate blogger, is to amuse yourself, really, or to get out your thoughts. I’m a writer – this I suppose I can say with confidence, although what kind of writing is a little harder to pin down; I’ve been a playwright and a journalist; a compulsive diary keeper; a “blogger” of sorts; even a psuedo-poet and a dabbler in fiction – the point being that I feel compelled to write, something, in some form, in order to keep balanced and sane and whatnot. I enjoy writing, on my own terms. I was reading lots of other blogs all the time and wanted to join in the commentary. It looked like fun. It is fun, sometimes. But then it got stressful. I don’t know why; probably because I’m neurotic. But once you start to get people visiting and reading, you feel compelled to post every day or every other day, even when you don’t have anything to say. And then you feel bad for being a hack. And then you feel like this whole blogging experiment is a big waste of your time (“you” being me, of course, no longer the ubiquitous imaginary blog “you”).

So I think this blog as an experiment has failed, alas. We started off as a group blog, with four bloggers. Two of them never wrote, and it was just me and Raee. We added youngjoe, and he never wrote. Oldmancoyote graciously joined, and he writes all the time, but then Raee decided to quit. So now it’s just me and oldmancoyote. And the problem is, we have no brand. Or I have no brand, at least.

See, once upon a time, operating under the I-am-blogging-solely-for-my-own-amusement assumption, I thought it was fine to have a blog where I wrote about feminist stuff, and libertarian stuff, and Ohio, and framing, and facebook, and copyright, and whatever the hell else I felt like writing about. But I don’t think this works, building-a-blog-wise. There are tech bloggers. There are feminist bloggers. There are PR bloggers. Everyone operates in their own little circles of the blogosphere, and seldom the twain shall meet, if you will. So I began to feel like it was a little silly to try and build a blog writing about whatever the hell I wanted to. It doesn’t really help you break in to any particular community. And I thought about just writing about feminist issues, but then the thing is that everything I want to write about is covered by the big feminist blogs already, so what’s the point? That’s the other thing (how many things is this, so far?) – the whole blog world seems so pointlessly circular sometimes. Some event happens, or some major news outlet publishes something, or some court case is decided, and then the big bloggers write about it and analyze it or snark-i-tize it, and then all the smaller bloggers link to those other bloggers and add their own analysis or snark or whatever … and it all just feeds off each other, around and around, and seems quite silly when you think about it, doesn’t it? And sometimes you’re on top of your game and write about something days before everyone else does, but it doesn’t matter, because nobody reads you anyway; and sometimes you write a really long and thoughtful or particularly snarky post, and you’re kind of proud of it, but nobody reads it anyway …

I’m not saying there’s no point to bloggers. There are tons of fabulous reasons to be a blogger. It makes sense for journalists to also blog, for advocates, for entrepreneurs, or for people who are just doing it to feel part of a community. There are plenty of reasons. I just don’t have any. At the moment, at least.

And yes. I am writing in circles and circles and circles again now, aren’t I? (No one has ever accused me of being succinct).

I do find it fun and thought-provoking and interesting to participate in the blog community sometimes. But, like I said, I have no “brand” right now. As a good little PR student this year, I know the importance of branding, and this is just not cutting it. So maybe I will reincarnate myself elsewhere in the blogosphere. Pick a brand. Etc. Maybe not. I think oldmancoyote will go back to The Burning Couch from whence he came. Anyway, don’t un-RSS-feed us yet! Oldmancoyote will tell you where he’ll be and I will, if I decide to reincarnate, tell you my future digital whereabouts. I mean, I say all this longwinded anti-blogging jibber jabber now, but soon I will be back at a desk job, and god knows you (you meaning me, again, of course, but also possibly the proverbial you) need something to make the hours at work pass, no?

And apparently UC-Irvine, which is starting its own law school, thought so too.  Until they realized that some conservatives were going to complain.  (See also here).

And why were they going to complain?  Because he had radical views about the constitution?  No.  His views are pretty much the standard. 

But because he’s had the temerity to point out that Bush’s views about the constitution are radical.  For examples of this radical hippie beatnick’s writings and public comments see here and here about wiretapping and here about habeus corpus. 

In response to the “recommendation” from General Petraeus that the U.S. should keep 130,000+ troops in Iraq until at least July and spend another $100 billion. 

What else could the United States do with a guesstimated $100 billion to reduce the strength and the appeal of Islamist terrorist groups worldwide?

If you think about it, deploying troops to Iraq is a rather ass-backwards way of addressing the threat of Islamist terrorist groups around the world.  Some, like myself, would argue that it doesn’t address that problem at all and actually aggravates it.  But all that aside, $100 billion could buy an awful lot of things.  And maybe some of those things actually works better than what we’re doing. 

Apparently, in addition to checking your bags, making sure you don’t have dangerous items such as bombs, big bottles of liquid, knives and guns, Southwest Airlines wants to make sure you’re not dressed too sexy.  Click on the links above to see for yourself if the women harassed were dressed inappropriately. 

I think it’s silly.  And to think that it wasn’t too long ago when flight attendants were hired primarily on their looks. 

I drove to the PT formation and fell in line with all of the other soldiers in training with me at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey.  There were all sorts of the rumors being passed back and forth along the rank and file.  The rumors were fueled by uncertainty, concern, and fear.  Some of us were from New York and Washington.  The White House had been attacked.  The Congress had been attacked.   The Pentagon.  More planes were in the air.  No one knew where the President was, if he was okay, what would happen to our country. 

And then of course, quite outside our concern for the people suffering, there was a lingering nervousness.  We were going to war.  That much we knew.  Most of us had never heard of Al Qaeda or Bin Laden.  But we knew that an enemy had revealed itself.  And we knew that it was on us to respond. 

Most of us joined for the benefits.  To afford college.  Somewhere in the back of our brains we understood what signing that contract meant.  But outside of the mostly air war in Bosnia during the late 90′s, there really didn’t seem to be a chance of war until that day.  So maybe some of us took that chance a bit lightly.  Maybe on that morning when the images of those burning towers, the hole in the Pentagon, members of both parties of Congress singing “God Bless America” from the Capitol Building steps were played over and over, the gravity of that contract, that uniform we put on every day, hit us like it never had before. 

Anger came later.  First, we were nervous and unsure. 

I was a Korean linguist.  Our teachers, all of them Korean natives, played the Korean language news broadcasts all day long – aired on a loop with the rapid fire Korean language commentary, watching that second plane hit again and again, picking through the vocabulary and syntax, trying to understand. 

I got my orders for Korea a few months later.  It wasn’t much of a surprise, to be honest.  I figured that’s where I would end up.  But the Arabic linguists who were in my company were almost certainly going to accelerate their training and could count on being deployed at one point or another.  I wanted to reach out to them and I felt guilty about not going with them.  When I had enlisted, I put Arabic and Chinese down as my first choices.  But Korean was the highest need language, required the most resources for training, and was considered the most difficult.  On that morning, looking over at the Arabic linguists and realizing what was going to happen to them, I thought that it should have been me. 

My heart goes out to them.  Still.  The last six years.  Some of them never made it back.  Hell, one of my soldiers in Korea died.  I’ve since gotten out and I’m living in D.C. studying the law, sleeping in most mornings, watching football on the weekends, blogging at leisure, flirting with girls, walking around town listening to my ipod, and picking through the media filter to find some clue about what it’s like over there.  The last six years.  My brothers and sisters aren’t in control of their lives, living in the desert, and getting nowhere and sometimes dying. 

All because of the tectonic shift of our political worldview from that one September morning. 

God watch over them.  I miss them. 

Bring them home. 

Another installment of Put the Video Camera Down! 

I saw this and wanted to shoot myself.  Would any girl actually respond to this guy?  For the sake of women everywhere, I hope not. 

Maybe I’m wrong.  Is this the future of dating?  God help us. 

If CBS wins, it will insulate television and radio broadcasters from sudden or accidental slips of the tongue or “wardrobe malfunctions” from the people being broadcast through their airwaves. 

I understand people’s discomfort with the idea that the major networks could be a source of violent programming, sexual content, or foul language.  I really do.  But I found it funny during that Super Bowl, where it seemed every other commercial was about erectile dysfunction, where the entire halftime show performance used sexual undertones, where scantily clad cheerleaders danced on the sideline, where the major sponsors consistently used sexual images to sell their products, that everyone went into orgasms of outrage when Janet’s breast was uncovered. 

I’m shocked!  Shocked to see that nudity is going on here! 

And if I remember correctly, that was the Super Bowl during which Moveon.org was not allowed to air a political aid because it would have been “inappropriate.” 

 What a fucked up sense of values we have. 

Elyzabethe said I should start posting webcomics because that’s all I read anymore, and I thought this one from Bunny would fit nicely here.

The album itself, though was a little disappointing. All but three of the songs are written entirely by Jenny Lewis, with one collaboration between her and Blake Sennet, one her and her boyfriend Jonathan Rice, and another written by Blake Sennet and Morgan Nagler. Personally I wish Blake had a little bit more to do with the production; I really enjoyed the albums released by The Elected, but not so much Jenny Lewis’ project with the Watson Twins. Most of the songs seem like there was not much thought put into the lyrics and are full of over-repeated phrases. The song “Moneymaker” is said to be the “big hit” from this album, and I suspect it will get radio play because it’s more “mainstream” if mainstream means songs about nothing that mindless teenagers can sing along to.

My oppinion, at first listen, of the best songs from the album are “Breakin Up” (Lewis/Sennet), “Dreamworld” (Sennet/Nagler), and “15″ (Lewis).

Overall, I just don’t think Jenny Lewis is very good without Blake Sennet by her side..

 Well, enjoy your lung cancer, motherf-ckers!

UPDATE: Fixed link.

UPDATE 2: Let this be a lesson to me for linking to an AP story through the L.A. Times.  Apparently, they use the same link for whatever they feel is the current top AP story.  So the article kept changing since I first posted to it.  So I found something else which related and avoided the L.A. Times AP link altogether. 

The group studied 180 hours of original programming on six broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, MyNetworkTV and the CW) during three two-week ratings sweeps periods in 2006 and 2007. It found that instances of violence had increased 52.4% since a similar study in 2000-2001 and that sexual content had increased 22.1%.

The Parents Television Council is hoping that the FCC begins to regulate violence on television the way they already regulate “indecent content.”

The network response is that with the vastly increased number of options available to families, with so many more channels now available in the basic cable package, there is less need to provide that type of programming. 

 To be honest, I agree with the networks on this one.  One of the reasons the FCC had the authority to regulate television was a combination of two factors – 1. the finite number of frequencies used to transmit broadcast signals were publicly owned and 2. there was a scarcity of options in broadcast television.  To the extent that #2 becomes less of an issue, the authority of the FCC to regulate broadcasting should be diminished. 

What the regulate-television-on-behalf-of-families crowd seems not to be able to understand is that television is a value neutral tool.  Like the internet, it has nothing to say about what it is transmitting.  It is not a substitute for parenting in respect to instilling values and exposing kids to what’s out there in the world.  Developing technology that allows “parental controls” to prevent kids from watching whatever they want while the parents are not around is appropriate.  

But the world is a dangerous place sometimes.  And people have sex all the time (at least that’s what I hear…).  I’d like my television shows to have something thoughtful to say about reality.  It’s an art.  Sometimes good.  Sometimes very, very bad.  But it should be free to tell stories that are important and relevant to all of us, even if often it does not.   

Artificial restraints based on someone’s notion of “sensible family” programming simply isn’t the appropriate role for the government.  Especially if there is a vastly less intrusive way to accomplish what is purported to be the goals of the movement. 

Bush on Maliki: 

“[Maliki's] learning to be a leader. And one of my jobs as the president and his ally is to help him be that leader without being patronizing. At some point in time, if I come to the conclusion that he can’t be the leader—he’s unwilling to lead or he’s deceptive—then we’ll change course. But I haven’t come to that conclusion. As a matter of fact, his recent actions have inspired me.”

“Without being patronizing?”  Mr. President, I do not think that word means what you think it means. 

This is not a game. 

The conduct of this war should not be evaluated in terms of a political campaign.  Policy principles on the war are infinitely more important than a political career.  Stop playing the game!  Right now, while the cocktail circuit orders another one on the company tab and tells the latest clever anecdote about who said what to who, young men and women are risking their lives conducting dangerous missions which are not designed to get us any further along toward our objectives. 

It’s a disgusting excercise in “looking busy.”  Meanwhile, our media establishment continues to pretend that the dog and pony show is the real thing. 

I wrote this just over a week ago: 

2. This “Surge is working” meme being pushed by the Bush administration and certain supporters of the war is the function of knee-jerk analysis.  Of course having more troops to conduct more military operations will have an effect on tactical issues.  But tactical military issues aren’t the source of the overall problem.  This war is not primarily about fighting enemy troops in the field of battle.  Killing a bunch of people won’t actually make things better. 

We are trying to prop up/create/maintain/establish a unified Iraqi government which provides security and government services to the people so that markets can function, schools can operate, and people can begin to invest again in their communities.  None of the so-called signs of progress being thrown around loosely by war supporters speak to these issues and therefore evaluating the efficacy of the surge is premature, at best. 

The fact that many war supporters are relying so heavily on skewed data to push their version of the war in the media is an indication to me that they still don’t get it.  They believe the war can be fought and won in the media.  Good public relations is a part of any effective war campaign in this day and age but it’s not an alternative to the facts on the ground. 

But then again it’s convenient to define the war’s progress with the way the media has portrayed it.  It makes pundits who support the war “soldiers” and makes those in the media who don’t play along “the enemy.” 

Somebody please wake up. 

Jane Hamsher over at Firedoglake talks about her battle on two fronts:  cancer and her insurance carrier.  The plight of the sick but insured was also the subject of Michael Moore’s documentary, “Sicko.”  And it’s the real issue with health care reform. 

Why have we inserted an element into our health care system whose only motivation is to maximize profit by providing as little care as allowed by the law?  And since disputes about coverage are generally interpreted under contract law, and insurance contracts are generally not negotiated between two equal parties, it’s the worst possible system if your objective is actually to provide care. 

Let’s have a decent conversation about health care reform in this country without screaming hysterically about the bogeyman of “socialized medicine.”  There’s really no other way to put it.  What we have now is awful and immoral. 

(Via David Kurtz at TPM) Here’s President Bush talking about Southern Louisiana: 

“[T]he taxpayers and people from all around the country have got to understand the people of this part of the world really do appreciate the fact that the American citizens are supportive of the recovery effort.”

“I come telling the folks in this part of the world that we still understand there’s problems and we’re still engaged.”

“We care deeply about the folks in this part of the world.”

In other related news, Bush announces his plan to negotiate a free trade agreement with the state of Louisiana. 

 Here’s Kos: 

What’s obviously happening is that they don’t want to piss off the xenophobic nativist Right, where “speaking Spanish” equals the collapse of Western civilization. But as Rove has always known, the Latino vote growing in size and influence, and if it becomes a reliable Democratic constituency (like African American and Jewish voters), the GOP is screwed for generations.

So as a partisan Latino Democrat, I say to the GOP — thanks! Your actions speak louder to my community than my words ever would.

I get the strategy of appealing to the “nativist” vote but seriously where else are the “nativists” going to go?