Got to love this country, right? If it isn’t done (for you) ten minutes before you even knew you wanted it, it’s totally okay to toss the person under the bus. And then back over them.

Seriously, I guess none of us deserve even a single chance.

Good, pressing questions, Cafferty: way to keep up on that there hard-hitting journalism.

But honestly, she’s smart to keep the media away if she plans on doing any more with her life than being a GOP cheerleader.

Regular posts should be coming once again now that it’s straightened out.

I’ll have my work laptop with me just in case the issue takes longer to resolve than planned, but I should be able to post regularly once again beginning today.

I guess it’s not really surprising. When companies have to lay off workers in order to remain in business, I think any cuts to upper management happen last. I think because there’s such a disconnect between the people running corporations versus those that make the corporation run – as well as pressure from stockholders – that it just make the decision to cut the jobs of 100 people making $20,000 versus a single, well paid executive.

I don’t know. I don’t claim to know economics very well. It’s on my list of things to learn.

It’s not that I fail to understand the importance of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they don’t seem real to me. This coming from a guy whose brother is a marine, and a marine whose location and purpose were often kept secret, and yet a marine who survived his first contract with the military and is beginning his second.

Maybe it’s just a case of war weariness: we’ve been at war for so long that it’s just another aspect of everyday life. “Oh, bomb went off and killed a bunch of school children in Kandahar? Oh well…”

Maybe reading it from the direct perspective can help me remember how terrible it really is.

Do you know what those things equal for Matt, even if the federal government hadn’t closed?

Snow way for me to get into work at all.

You’d think getting snowed in would be good for writing, but I think it dredges up a bunch of other, real world concerns. Like fighting the roads and shoveling your sidewalk and finding parking spaces and making sure that you’ve got enough food to survive and praying to God that the next storm doesn’t make your roof collapse in on itself.

While it’s useful to group all of Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgendered folk together nationally for the cause, the truth of it is that we’re all very different. Just as different as heterosexual people, one might say. While gay marriage is big in the news lately, there are people I know who don’t want to get married. Just not in their life view as it were. But it doesn’t make the fight any less important.

Still, we’re different enough that there are classes of gay. Older versus younger: for any of the younger that actually care to listen, you’d hear the war stories. Stories of the outward, physical discrimination. You’ve got the Stonewall gays, the one’s that quite literally fought during the beginning of the Gay Rights movement. To them, I’ve been told, us younger generation is a bunch of candy-asses that have had everything handed to us on a silver platter because of what they did. And it’s partially true.

But we fight a different kind of war now. It’s a war of ideas against the final stalwarts of ignorance within our country. You’d think that “live and let live” would be good enough in 2010, but you’d be surprised. If “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is overturned, then we’ll have been successful in destroying one of those barriers.

And we’ll have created a new class of gay exclusive to the military. The gay that served in fear that his sexuality would be discovered. Or not even discovered, but just hinted at – I believe that Roman Catholic church tends to call these things “particular friendships.” Once “Don’t Ask” is overturned all the new recruits will get to hear the war stories of the elder class, and get talked down to about how they never had to deal with it or worry about it.

For those of you who are straight, it’s a little akin to when your parents told you that they had to walk a mile to school in the snow uphill both ways. And it’s the same as when your grandparents told you that they had to walk ten miles to school in the snow uphill both ways.

Maybe though in another ten to twenty years we’ll have gotten all the classes out of our system. There won’t be any Stonewall gays and no Don’t Ask gays because all of the rights will have been won.

That’ll be a nice time.

We’re snowed in here in DC, and I did a great amount of nothing yesterday. Including forgetting to write.

I guess we’re all allowed a day off every once in a while.

But keep your eyes open for a post later today.

So when you buy this sculpture, you are legally required to plug it into the internet. At which point it will point itself at eBay and begin an auction for itself.

What the fuck.

In addition to losing your sculpture, you have to pay all eBay fees. And you can pay the artist too.

On one hand, I’m proud of the guy. He made a piece of work that bucks the gallery/curator system. Good for him.

On the other hand, this continues to provide proof for a believe I’ve got about art – that all art is good for is itself. It doesn’t provide anything to the world, nothing that wasn’t there before. Art is wasteful in every way possible. It wastes money and resources that could have been put towards a utilitarian and helpful purpose. It wastes time. It wastes energy.

The majority of art isn’t for people. Art is for artists and curators and collectors. It is for no one else. The closest thing that comes to art for others is graffiti. I’ve got a great amount of respect for street artists. Some of them keep it real. But for others, it’s about fame and getting their name out, so it’s a mixed bag.

Art should be able to rise above these things. But it can’t. It never will.