"You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. The money doesn't exist. What does it ultimately mean? Will there be cutbacks in those services? I think that's where we're headed."
-- Terri Sexton, http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1600656.html, in a story whose link I found using Facebook Notes
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I've begun to use the Notes app on Facebook, or leaving comments, more like. Not that two blogs--one personal, one professional--aren't enough. It's just that even though I claim political apathy (apparently because of a "lack of social conscience"), I find political quips sprouting in the gardens of daily conversation.
Bad metaphor? Fine. Some examples (straight from this horse's chomper):
"Jeez, these roads still haven't been plowed. Good thing taxes in Cincinnati are so high."
"Being a conservative in theatre is like being a liberal at Hillsdale."
and,
(after an actor suggested America do away with the National Endowment for the Arts and replace it with a National Theatre:) "You know who else created national theatres? Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, and revolutionary Ireland."
And it's been annoying, if not to others, then to myself. Why preach apathy if I'm not apathetic? Just because I, like many, don't care enough to act on a lot of these beliefs, doesn't mean I don't have them. So, to depressurize, I'll leave my comments on Facebook.
In other words, instead of living with the hypocrisy of pretending not to care, I guess I'd rather live with the hypocrisy of pretending to care.
Hm. Well, I'm over it.
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Watched In Bruges today. I always feel weird when I watch Colin Farrell, because I think I kinda look like him. (No? Anyway.) I liked seeing Ralph Fiennes play a cockney role.
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Tomorrow (and tonight, I suppose), I am devoid of my girlfriend and by extension, her car. (She's up north, standing up in her best friend's wedding.)
I have plans to walk fifteen minutes uphill to the nearby Kroger and gather supplies for Sunday night's dinner (squash soup, stuffed peppers and an off-brand pie are on the docket). I may push the walking a little farther west and catch an indie movie on Ludlow, or south for bistros and trinket shops and the like. Maybe I'll really balls up and walk across the river into Kentucky.
I'm also budgeting time for a lot of reading and writing. At least an hour each, hopefully in the same genre. I've no real pretensions for getting a play published anytime soon, but at the same time, the last real attempt I made was sorely and hastily thrown together for a class. This time, with time enough at last, I want to make it worth my while.
Really, tomorrow is going to be all about using the time I have alone. For an audience of one, a performance has to be perfectly tailored. And I'm not in the mood for some winter improvising, nor some standstill existentialism. I need action, monologuing, and at least one set change. And maybe a change in tactics, but that's neither here nor there.
1 comment:
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/against-independent-voters/#comment-9576
Robert Lee Hotchkiss, Jr.'s argument is that Fish is deliberately misrepresenting the liberal political platform, citing such apocryphal events in American history as the attack on "Pear Harbor." I, for one, thought our pears were, well, harbored, not under attack.
The article gets my cheese, too, though. However, he does have a point: The whole "voting the person rather than the party" deal has turned at least the presidential office into a kind of celebrity position, which leads to personal, rather than political or rational, assessments of the office-holder. Once that happens, debate ceases on policy and begins on personality: "Bush isn't that bad of a guy," "I hate Bush," "Obama is such a people-person," "Obama is a terrorist." Party thinking at least leads people to consider ideas, while candidate-driven thinking could get hung up on something as flimsy as, say, a person's speaking abilities, or his wife's fashion sense.
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