Ceasefire

Dear Reader,

Well, I've been driving myself crazy. I spent 10 hours on Wednesday flipping between MSNBC, CNN, and FOX, and followed literally 600 minutes of "lipstick-on-a-pig" coverage until my soul leaked out of my ears. That night, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think about anything else. My faith in humanity's ability to rise above its reptilian self fell to an all-time low.

And then, praise God for this one small blessing, today was September 11. And I forgot about politics for a day.

I've been watching because I care. Because I have a vested interest. Because the Christian American Moviegoer in me who saw "All Dogs Go to Heaven" wants to see the attack dogs who fight dirty get what's coming to 'em. Instead, I've been slowly dissolving and not, I might add, actually volunteering to do anything other than watch and react.

I know I'm lost in an existential quandary because I grew a beard.

Not an intentional beard, mind you. If you have never seen me with a beard, you're a lucky person. My face is the antithesis of my scalp when it comes to hair production, like "The Peanut Butter Solution" only the Senor is creepily after the boy's 5 o'clock shadow. I'm not dissing myself, it's really an unflattering beard. It adds 50lbs, makes me look mangy and downright scruffy (and not in a roguishly handsome Han Solo kind of way, more in a "hair on a hobbit's foot" way). It's black and curled and greasy and clings to my face like a dirty secret, and I only grow it when I'm feeling too overwhelmed by my thoughts to muster the strength to shave, to cleanse, to release my face from it.

My mom, upon whom experiments should be conducted because she is right more often than any human being should be able to be, told me once that "Disorder on the inside means disorder on the outside." I'm sure you've experienced this. You feel out of sorts and your room gets covered, the kitchen sink fills up, bills sit in unopened envelopes. There's a connection between you and the world, and however your world looks on the inside is what reality starts to look like around you.

This is precisely why I've started avoiding saying things like "That will never happen to me." Because, let's face it, the Universe is a smart ass, the penultimate jokester. She laughs blood and sex and sweat, and She will find a way to make your life ironic.

I remember once, when I was living in Florida, a girl who was a passenger in my car asked if I'd ever gotten a ticket. Now, I had an inkling at this point that the only reason I'd never gotten a ticket was because I had never vocalized the words, "No, I've never gotten a ticket." But this particular day I was feeling brazen. Maybe I wanted to strut a little stuff, put a spit-shine on the old Martin, you know? And so I said it. Out loud. "No, I've never gotten a ticket."

The next day, it's raining. I'm on my way back from class, sitting at a red light, when a cop pulls up behind me. No big deal, I'm not doing anything wrong. The light turns green, I start to go, and he follows me through the light. In fact he follows me for an entire mile, and as I'm about to turn into my apartment complex his lights start flashing. I pull over hoping he'll pass me by like I'd seen people do in movies (how else was I supposed to know what to do?), but no, he was coming for me. Or rather, She was coming for me, because She had heard what I said, and She couldn't pass up the opportunity. Turns out my registration was expired. I didn't even know. The cop did a routine check on my license plate, saw that I was a few months out, and pulled me over.

I. Shit. You. Not.

$146 in fines later, I realized this one absolute truth: Saying something "never will happen" is the same thing as saying "this absolutely must happen." Don't give the Universe the pleasure of proving you wrong. She will do it often enough anyways without any help from you.

So that's what I'm reminding myself of as I sit here all mangy and gross, telling myself I'm going to shave in the morning. Existential questions gather on the idle soul, cling to soft skin and weight it down with the unanswerable. And if I want the world around me to be better, I should turn off the goddamn TV and start fixing the world inside me.

Your,
Martin

Why I Like John McCain

Damn politics.  Some of us actually have to work in the morning.

But I had to write.  I have some sympathy for you, dear Reader.  You come to this blog, all two of you (thanks Mom and Dad), to read about my latest fascinating existential quandary and all you've been getting lately is "Sarah Palin hates polar bears."  

I can't help it.  It's what's on my mind.

As I struggled to stay awake through John McCain's speech, I realized one very obvious thing: This man is not going to win any awards for public speaking.  He may be a maverick, but he was clearly a C-student in "Speech and Debate."  And that's okay.  As the past eight years have shown, you don't have to be a good speaker (or be able to form a sentence) to be President.   Everyone including Evil Tina Fey... I'm sorry Sarah Palin... acknowledges that Obama's appeal is, in part, that he just *sounds* so damn different than the past eight years.  I don't think Barack could sound more different than George W. Bush, do you?  I really like how he doesn't talk down to me.  I like that I leave his speeches feeling better about my country than when I entered them.

But John McCain's speech tonight was respectful, moderate, hopeful, and slightly ironic considering his party had just spent a week doing all the things McCain promises he would get rid of in Washington.  I felt like an alien ship had landed from the 80's, back when Republicans actually represented the center of America and not the scariest of our relatives (now available in cowboy hats!).  A deafening silence set over the hall when McCain honored Obama's qualities and achievement, talked about how corrupt Republicans and the Republican party have lost the trust of America, about how both parties in Washington are broken.  You could nearly taste the desperate thirst on the part of the delegates for the blood of Democrats, Liberals, Media, and anyone else who dares to ask a question about the direction of our country (to their credit, they have yet to blame Canada).  Their applause seemed especially forced save for the end, when John McCain was truly inspiring.  

I give him a lot of credit for going in there and being himself, for not pretending to be a neocon and Sarah Palin's soul mate.  Sure, harping on his Vietnam service is kind of ironic considering he's telling the story to the same delegates who viciously destroyed his campaign 8 years ago. They were crying and weeping for him, but you know if he were a Democrat they'd be Swiftboating him back to Hanoi.

I had the overwhelming sense that John McCain is too good for them.  He is the candidate their party needs but not the candidate their party deserves, to quote an especially relevant movie.  It's no wonder all anyone can talk about is Sarah Palin.  She was much flashier, and she proves that all one has to do to be considered "conservative" is to talk about what a gutless unpatriotic inept elitist [Gore, Kerry, Obama, Big Bird] your opponent is.

But not you, John.  You shared a deeply personal story about the moment in Hanoi when you were broken.  If, in another life, you were instead an author, Oprah would be crying as you recounted your incredible tale of heroism.  But instead you are reduced to being coronated by the same kingmakers who have ruled over the past eight disastrous years with their feigned smiles and warlike chants and their gleaming white skin.  

You are a good man, John McCain.  I'm proud that you're an American.  And thank you for holding the Republican party more accountable for the past eight years than anyone else has managed to do.  That took serious cajones, and in front of 40,000 of them, no less. 

Personally, I do not believe our country's problems can be solved by the same party that created them.  I think you confirmed that for me tonight more than anything else could have.  That you, John McCain, are such an outsider in your own party says less about you and more about what the Republican Party, the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, and my father, has lost.

  

Martin

Sarah Barracuda

Well, Sarah, you did it. You brilliantly and effectively tore into Obama. I'm glad that hope-mongering bi-racial child of a single mother got what was coming to him. You've shown all of the wildly successful Republicans (positively glowing in their shimmering Hall of the White People) that you can fight dirty. A "pitbull with lipstick," as you so eloquently put it. My lady, you fit right in.

Sadly, for you, you've forgotten why the American people fall in love.

You see, people don't fall in love with looks or personality. They don't fall in love with intellect or temperament, eloquence or ideas. People fall in love with how they feel when they're with you.

And Sarah, you don't make me feel so good.

You give me that same queasy, tremulous flutter in my stomach that I felt when George W. Bush destroyed John McCain in 2000 over his military record. You give me that same sick, hopeless feeling I had when I found out Bill Clinton lied about letting Monica suck him off. You give me that same, fleeting pleasure I feel whenever the other teams loses, or the big hitter strikes out, or the movie I was looking forward to turns out to be terrible.

Not once tonight did you or your party propose a single idea that would help Jessie and I pay our bills every month. Not once did your party or its cast of vanquished ideologues (Romney, Thompson, Guiliani) propose just exactly how you intend to undo the damage your party has done in the past 8 years. I truly wish that Republicans were as good at running America as they are at attacking Democrats. Maybe then they'd have a record and a platform to run on.

No, Sarah, I don't feel good when I listen to you. I don't feel good when I listen to the talking heads turn their words to you. I don't feel more hopeful or more positive or remotely convinced that the Republicans will do anything but what they have always done: Talk a big game, win, and accomplish nothing. In fact, you seemed to delight in ravaging a story not unlike your own, a story about an individual who came from little and accomplished much despite every influence to the contrary.

Your speech, in the end, betrays other Americans just like you. It betrays yourself. It is more of the same. And Jessie and I can't afford more of the same. It's just too expensive.

So, politicians of all stripes, I ask only this of you: Level the playing field as much as humanly possible, and then kick the ball and leave the rest to me. A third of my paycheck went to G.W. Bush, so don't pretend to be the party of low taxes. Blacks and Hispanics are going to one day supersede whites, so enjoy your all-white conventions while they last. All I really want from you is Hope. Hope that this nation can rise above its differences and remain that shining beacon I learned about in school, the place I am proud to call my home, the country that I thank God for every time I return from visiting another nation.

Give me Hope, Sarah. John. Barack. Joe.

And then get out of my way.

-Martin

Knight of the Old Republic

Tiran stood at the Cantina door, the cold tip of his blaster pointed directly at the Rhodian's head. He was drunk. Angry. He always got angry when he drank, which is why he did it so often. Angry felt good. Angry felt alive.

Mos, his compatriot, looked on at the helpless alien with hungry eyes. Which color would this one bleed? Blue? Green? The patrol on Citadel Station was too small to keep the law, and the patrol for Entertainment Module 081 kept a safe distance over by the airlock down the corridor, never venturing into the Cantina. It would feel good to kill again.

Suddenly, three shadowy figures appeared behind them. The first, a roguish pilot, tapped a twitchy finger on the modified blaster at his side. The second... the second was beyond the description, like a damaged statue. Her eyes were white. Blank. Staring. Her brown cloak and the odd thrill of death enshrouded her in enough mystery to change the temperature of the room. The third held a vibroblade in his bionic right hand. Tiran could hear the gears clicking as it pulsed on the hilt of the weapon.

This last one was trouble.

The Rhodian pleaded with the strangers to help him. Fools. That modified blaster would fetch money. Modifications were illegal on the Citadel. Czerka's men would be hungry to get their hands on it and turn it on those tree-hugging Ithorians.

The thought was exhilarating. Tiran argued with the group over the Rhodian's fate, but he could barely hear himself think. His temper burned hot for a fight, and he could tell the pilot and the woman were boiling over, too. That's when the bearded man spoke up in a smooth voice.

"Can't we all just talk about this?" he said.

WAIT WAIT WAIT. You mean I will gain dark side points by kicking this guy's ass? WTF? Why does the Light Side have to be a frigging pansy parade? Obi-wan Kenobi cut a guy's arm off in a bar just because he could. Han Solo shot first and put a hole in Greedo you could fly a shuttle through, and I get to be Dr. Joyce Meyer with a Lightsaber and "talk about this"? Maybe next I should ask him how he's feeling. "You seem like an angry mercenary. Tell me about your childhood." This guy kills aliens for fun, and somehow I'm supposed to have a moral dilemma about slicing him in half, raiding his corpse, and using his keycard to ransack his apartment? Why the hell did I spend all that time making my Jedi look cool just to have him be a frigging ween?

Light side. Dark side. Sometimes a Jedi just needs to choke a bitch.

-m