I took a blog vacation this past weekend, writing nothing and visiting next to same as I airily reposed in a near blog-free existence. It was like when you stop drinking coffee in that I felt a combination of lowered tension along with the recurring realization that I was moving palpably slower than everything around me. It was like cutting caffeine, but without the headache. I didn't even mind the slowness, the dullness growing as I became more and more distant from the blogosphere.
Then last night I made the mistake of going to Daily Kos and it was like merging back into the expressway after a weekend in the country. Everyone flipping everybody off, manic verbal swerving, pervasive paranoia about Karl Rove, Diebold, the mainstream media, other Daily Kos posters, big tent Democrats, European Social Democrats, and Karl Rove again.
It made me contemplate the idea of just staying on the access road, turning back to the country and buying that little farmhouse we saw out past Mountainair. The one without Internet access.
But here I am: tanned, rested, and only a little ambivalent about merging into that traffic.
Tonight in honor of the Madrid/Wilson race I'm listening to Yo La Tengo's new album...the one entitled "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass". Do I even need to mention which candidate that title is meant to inspire?
Speaking of blogs, candidates and beating your ass, I have to admit I'm pretty sick at this point of just about every NM blog when it comes to "analysis", "reportage" and "insight" on Election 2006. And that includes Burque Babble. In fact, put Burque Babble #1 on the list of blogs I'm sick of in this regard. I don't mind.
No, I'm not suggesting all bloggers go back to the classic blog entries: that back soreness from working out yesterday at the gym, the new restaurant we went to that had the prettiest tablecloths, feelings of angst and contemplation on what that angst means for the rest of the world. No, God no, nothing like that. Although, now that you mention it, my back is a little sore....
What I'm suggesting is a simple corrective that, if implemented, would perhaps add a bit of perspective into the vitriol and mouthfoaming that is Bloggelection'06. Namely, all bloggers have to change sides until Election Day. FBIHOP and Johnny Mango, for instance, would start writing entries about the positives of Representative Heather Wilson, while Mario Burgos would pen video-filled rationales for voting Madrid.
Duke City Fix would quit pretending it isn't slanted and stop having 57 commented posts about whether it's slanted and how its slant evidences itself in Andrea Lin's food review on pancakes. Maybe Andrea Lin could start praising waffles instead, or something. JoeMonahan would just quit pretending about, uh, everything (objectivity, relevance, that the politico ads don't matter).
DemocracyforNewMexico, WednesdayMorningQuarterback, MPyre...they'd all have to take off their own rose colored glasses and replace them with the opposite model. Just for a week. Heck, even Madridforcongress and Heatherforcongress could get into the act. it would be easier for them anyway, as they often have the opposite candidate featured on their websites.
I'll get us started. As a "liberal" blog I'm supposed to like Patricia Madrid and hate Heather Wilson (I know, I keep forgetting according to some people). So here goes my entry, a paragraph praising Heather Wilson:
Ode To Heather Wilson (prose poem style...which means it isn't a poem at all, just a paragraph)
Heather Wilson voted for the Stem Cell bill and to override the President. I haven't agreed with President Bush since....well ever, so Wilson's stand against him is admirable in my book. I also think Wilson knows what she's talking about when it comes to a number of issues, and I like that in a Representative. She also has really short hair in that "I don't care if you think I'm a lesbian" sort of way, which I find defiant and cool, especially in a Republican. Lastly, she voted against some evil bill that would have required reporting illegal immigrants when they went to the hospital.
Okay, that was hard. But aren't the hard things worth doing?
Somehow I have this gut feeling that nobody is going to take me up on "Opposite Blogging", especially in the last week of the campaigns. Pity. No, it will probably just be "liberal" folks positing Heather Wilson as a closeted lesbian who votes against her "true" sexual orientation and "conservative" bloggers copy/pasting parts of my little paragraph as proof that support for Heather is crossing over to Democrats in a big way.
Sigh. I think I might take that next exit off the expressway, and head back to the farmhouse just past Mountainair. The one without the Internet.
P.S.: Everybody needs to get this new Yo La Tengo record. Really, everybody should get every Yo La Tengo record, imho, even/especially Republicans.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
But I like my rose-colored glasses!
Glad to have you back... I always look forward to your posts.
yeah, maggie's actually the one who wears those. :-)
this is a great post! so right on...!
...saw the reference to this at m-pyre, and had to check it out.
Well worth the visit. This is pretty inspired...and brave, my friend. Alas, not a soul from either end will go there with you. Shame.
Then again, maybe they're too busy singing bad kereoke versions of Purple Rain 9that was brutal up close) and the Dixie Chicks.
Speaking of which, was I the only one who found MUCH irony in that horrible Dixie Chicks screech last week at Carom Club?
The DC, former darlings of the right, but not yet fully embraced by, I suppose, lefties, being sung at a D event? It was that Earl song, right? Something along the lines of Earl getting offed by a woman? I can't recall fully.
G; seeing the world, vaguely, through thick, scratched lenses.
Post a Comment