Jill Rants and Raves

don't bite when a simple growl will do

  graphic © Jill Posener

Freud - who, by the way, would not rank in my top 10 people to share a beer and a ham dinner with - wrote: 'dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate'. It's a funny thing to read who came up with the best dog quotes. Kafka for another, and Jonathan Swift of course.

And who would be on my Top 10 for dinner? It would include Rosa Luxembourg, Aretha Franklin, Fran Lebowitz and Diane Arbus. Yikes. Let's get some fun guys in there. Mmmm. John Lennon, James Baldwin and for pure good company - Bill Clinton. John Casavettes, Susie Bright, Dolly Parton and Dylan Thomas. Strange. For me, who has a huge freaking fear of what happens to people when they drink, this is an interesting gang. I'd bring along my dog Calvin for balance.

Whatever - this blog is about love and hate. The thin line between. The way in which these two seeming opposites intertwine in your mind like hands twisting rope. How much 'hate' we endure in our quest for calm seas. How much brutality we deliver and sustain in our search for 'pure' love. And before y'all start speed dialling me - I don't have a black eye, or a split lip, I don't have brawls with people. Except. Yeah I do brawl. Verbally. And I barely drink. Don't do any drugs, nada, except I really wish I could sleep without the Ambien.

My nights as a kid, from about 1962, in fact most of my nights until 2004 were filled with such terrifying scenes of destruction, of violence, of snakes which were really lighting bolts of electrically charged death swinging through my bedroom, of strange faceless attackers, of suffocation, of pure terror. One night in early 2004 when I was in an unfamiliar but beautiful place I tore out of bed, plunged through a screen door, my lungs full of fear, my heart pounding, and woke, saliva dripping from my mouth outside on a deck overlooking a valley in Mendocino county, two of my dogs by my side and pounding my fists on the hard cold concrete, crying as I woke, sore from my blast through the door, desperate to have the nightmares end.

Since that night I can count on one hand how many nightmares I've had. I don't know what changed. Perhaps turning 50 was good for something.

But I am wondering if there are just some of us who long for calm, but are lacking the particular tool to accomplish that little household task. Some of the most chaotic people I know and love describe themselves as wanting nothing but the simplest of wishes fulfilled - to be loved for who they are, to be listened to, to be held, and accepted. Isn't that we all want, you ask with a quizzical look, a furrowed brow as if to say 'well, duh, Jill'.

I think that what passes for calm in many lives is the absence of real emotion, true passion and engagement with the world around. A sort of dull domestic ache which is too comfortable to leave, too knotted to untie, too complex a business deal to disengage from - so small moments of escape like volunteering at an animal shelter or going grocery shopping - seem huge. 

I wrote the above blog - and didn't post it - in February this year. I'm really in a familiar tumult. And my sense of my history is that only by unplugging all the wires and making a huge change will I get back a state of calm. Then I'll wake up in the desert and think 'oops, didn't quite intentd to come this far during one of my nightmares. Wonder if they are still waiting for me at home'. I can't remember, hope I didn't sell the house.

the price of activism

Okay, that's the birthday over with. It has been a hard two weeks, encompassing the death of my friend Dona Spring, who turned the same age as me last January and who had spent more than half of her life battling the ravages of a particularly nasty form of rheumatoid arthritis. When she died after a bout of pneumonia her spine was at an almost 90 degree angle. I loved this woman for her undiluted passion for animals, for the weak, the environment and for her city, as well as for her pure disdain for those who lied and tried to exploit the land for profit. When I met Dona, she was already well into her second decade of wheelchair activism. And what a friggin' activist. Remaining true to her causes, her passions and her constituents ensured there would be no backroom deals at the last minute, no moving to the right to appease the so-called 'middle'. Dona was elected and re-elected in Berkeley's District 4, a mixed neighborhood where small Victorian cottages and a wide range of incomes butt heads with downtown development interests. She was usually opposed by a candidate with more money to spend, backed by business or the university. Dona's last public statements came at the old oak grove which UC Berkeley is determined to destroy to build a new gymnasium. If she could have found a way to hoist her souped up wheelchair into the branches to join the tree sitters - she would. Dona was my strongest ally in battles with the Berkeley animal shelter where over 70% of incoming animals were killed until I decided to change my life and devote as long as it took to shock this so called progressive city into the new millenium of animal care. 

It may seem like a small achievement, but I have always believed that when you act locally the ripples can be unstoppable. And if you aren't interested in animal shelter issues, please just read on because every time we change our small worlds, we are empowered to imagine bigger change.

I gave ten years to this effort - during which time I take full credit for removing the Police Department from running the shelter. In 2000, after two years of telling City Council repeatedly of brutality and callousness by staff and management at the shelter - including stories of staff experimenting with how to kill a dog with the smallest amount of euthanasia drug to save money, or killing an animal who was a favorite of a particular volunteer - the Police Chief called me into his office and showed me some polaroids of a dead love bird, and admitted that a staff member at the shelter had bitten it to death in retaliation for it nipping at him. He said 'I've got a problem down there but we're cops. Most of my guys are saying "it's just a bird". What am I gonna do?' I told him his department had no business running an animal shelter. And that activists like me would give him no peace until they got out of the business of killing animals. And then I repeated the statement to the Mayor and the City Manager and within two weeks a decision had been made to transfer the department to civilian control.

Once civilians control animal services it becomes a place where change is possible. No longer run as a paramilitary operation, those who come into contact most with animal control feel less scared of the consequences. When civilians are doing the budgeting, money is spent on volunteer co-ordinators and not on police cruisers (now there's a concept), and when a civilian is running animal services, the emphasis shifts from code enforcement to welfare and care. Berkeley now has the lowest euthanasia rate in all of California.

6 years ago my calls for a new animal shelter building were finally heeded by Council and I led a successful campaign for a bond measure which raised 7.2 million dollars for a new shelter. I have fought for the last six years for the right site for that building and Berkeley finally three weeks ago - just before Dona's death - bought a property I have long thought of as the right one. The last conversation I had with Dona was to tell her the news.

But these ten years have taken their toll on me. It is hard to admit that I sort of abandoned my work as a photographer, that I neglected my relationships, that I decided that I had to bring about this change regardless of the effect on me personally. I found myself at 50 unable to earn what I had in earlier years. I've paid a pretty hefty price for my activism.

So, here's the thing. I took another blow this week, a tough one. But blows do have the effect of energising me. I've been trying over the last year to recover my enthusiasm for writing and for taking the photographs again which I know have had an impact on people. I'm dragging out the novel again, I've made some headway on my new play which will pick up the same main character from Any Woman Can (yeah, yeah, it's me. That's a surprise eh?), and I'm trying my hardest (though it is hard) to start work on a new photo book - a sort of journey in words and pictures through the landscape of my life and others who have self defined at some point or another as butch. 'BUTCH - from androgny to elsewhere'.

Elsewhere. I did change Berkeley in a small way. It's probably time to leave.

birthday blog

It's my birthday tomorrow and I'm not too bothered about it. I am realising I'm a much nicer person than I was even 3 or 4 years ago, and I can credit any number of people for that.

I think by the time I was 8 I had been pretty much gutted as a structure. And I have been an angry boy or girl (depending on the circumstances) ever since, and a lot of damage can be done before you stop trying to re-build the interior according to what you think might make you lovable, desirable, and 'happy'.
I was definitely born lovable, desirable and, according to my mother's diary - damn happy. But the first and most important part is the ability to be honest with yourself. After that, as the bard did indeed say, it makes it tough being deceitful to others. 

I've been agonising about some of the many moments of despair in my childhood - there were so many it sometimes feels like an unstoppable flood. And because there are so many exquisite moments of joy and celebration, I find myself feeling guilty about evoking the dark side.

Once, in Malaya, where my dad taught the history of architecture, my Mum was driving my older brother Alan and I along backroads in the country. Malaya in the 50's was a country under British control but with increasing numbers of attacks by small groups of armed vigilantes struggling for independence. We drove endless miles on one lane roads against a backdrop of rubber plantations, palms, rice fields. I picked a fight with Alan, probably out of boredom, and he hit me. I probably hit him back, and he me. I screamed out for my mum to intervene. She then did something that I have never forgiven myself for - she slammed on the brakes, and threw Alan out of the car and left him by the roadside, with her white knuckle rage terrifying both of us. She drove away, with my 10 year old brother standing desperate by the side of the road, tears beginning to well in his eyes. He begged her not to, and so did I.

But she drove away from him, with me staring helplessly out of the back window. Out of sight. I began to panic, and begged her to go back, never realising that my desire to hurt him could result in such abandonment and cruelty. It seemed to go on forever, but probably was only a few minutes, before she did such a wild U turn on the narrow road that I was thrown against the side of the car. As we approached Alan, I had never seen him so defeated. But a growing sense of fear started crawling up my throat.

When we, as a family, moved to Berlin in 1961, just as the Wall was being erected, my life was thrown into a state of terrible chaos. Now my internal chaos was echoing back at me from every part of the place we lived, where my Jewish father deepened his denial about what happened - to members of his own family less than 20 years earlier, where my deeply conflicted gender battle began to manifest itself in the battles at school, where a language I did not speak and a cultural environment which clawed at my very being, isolated me still further. A place where all the nightmares would become my inner friend and betrayer. I remembered recently that when I went to my first German school - without knowing much more than 'Guten Tag' and 'Curry Wurst mit Pomme Frites bitte' - I remember the moment  that I felt, for the first time, that I was in the wrong body. No, not in the wrong body - my body was a perfect, compact little androgyne, but it didn't feel like a girl's body. Not yet. As I was forced into the female curriculum of dance and sewing for girls I had the first serious bout with feeling that I was completely lost, with no hope for recovery. I remember feeling trapped and physically ill.

I went home and cried to my father that he had to, just had to go to the school and insist they let me in the metal work class, the boys class. I don't have a clear recollection of the drama and the fury around this, but for some reason my Dad understood that he had to back me up. He didn't win the battle, but it was one of the few times he took my side. Soon after, my parents moved me to a more 'alternative' school with English as the primary language. It wasn't the complete solution, but it probably saved my life. Until the next time.

I'm thinking of these things now because it's my birthday tomorrow and I keep hoping that one birthday I will wake up and not feel that I am at war. The sun will shine, I will feel no guilt. I will be loved for who I am. The dogs will all be in a good mood. I'm not sure tomorrow's birthday will quite be there.

marriage - a major cause of divorce

photo: Jill Posener©

Watching Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin get married at San Francisco City Hall after 55 years together - a lifetime of commitment without the right to state sanctioned marriage and the civil rights that come with that - brought tears to my eyes. So, don't get me wrong. I am a huge supporter of relationships. Relationships that work for the people involved. And I'm not stupid - though sometimes I know I appear that way - I know full well that political and social progress is like a long snake winding it's way around a corner. It isn't until the last portion of the tail has cleared the obstacle that the creature can begin to move seamlessly ahead. And I can see, as friends of mine are planning their weddings, that there is a mixture of satisfaction, joy, exuberance, and sheer fuck you as part of the planning process. Perhaps because for many gay, lesbian, queer and transgender couples, this act of public exhortation comes not at the beginning of a relationship (as many marriages do) but years, even decades into the partnership, and is a recounting of the good (and bad) times already spent instead of a 'cross your fingers and hope it lasts' list of promises as yet unkept - perhaps because of that, I can pack my shockingly large bundle of cynicism in a bag and stow it away.

I hope so, because three of my dearest friends are marrying their sweeties in the next three months and for some strange reason, two of the couples have asked me to photograph the nuptials, and the partner of one even ventured into shark infested waters to ask aloud whether I might consider officiating....

It would be facile to say that my own parents ugly and bitter divorce contributes to my attitude. But, hey, the divorce was no more a combat zone than the marriage itself. It would be an easy cop out to look to my own 12 year relationship which ended - unexpectedly. Susie and I had rushed to City Hall in San Francisco to register as Domestic Partners when that became an option - but long before there was any legal meaning to it. The piece of paper hung in our home alongside the certificate of 'good canine citizen' that Roxy, our border collie mix, had attained at the SPCA dog training course. Like our domestic partnership, Roxy's good behaviour was symbolic only, as she chased bikes, nipped at joggers and bit me in the leg when I tried to take a bone away from her.

And when Susie and I bought a home together in Berkeley we went to City Hall and asked for Berkeley's version of the Domestic Partner certificate. The woman in the City Clerk's office couldn't find the piece of paper and looked at us quizzically 'It doesn't mean anything you know'. Susie and I said in unison 'It means something to us'. So I get it, OK? I understand that all the citadels need to be stormed, even if I don't want to share in the spoils.

But I have already seen some of the ugliest divorces occur between women. Every bit as much as the mean and twisted separations between my heterosexual buddies. And while I accept fully that marriages and relationships will end I am just shaken by the toxicity and the fury of the break ups. I think marriage vows should contain the following:

"I love you now, as certainly as the sun comes up. You are the person I choose to be with, and I honor and respect you. I will take care of your needs as best I can, and I will be, as much as I can, the person worthy of the love you offer me. However, I'm likely to fuck up and be a total jerk at times. Actually, maybe a lot of times. I will get really really mad at you, do inexplicably stupid things and then need you all over again. And if we should break up, I'm gonna do my best to totally annoy and hurt you, I'll use our children or pets as wedge issues, I'll freeze the bank account, and cut up your credit cards. I'll make sure my family and friends don't talk to you anymore and I'll dump all your clothing in front of your new girlfriends house on a wet night. Having said all that, let's enjoy this marriage event, which has cost us 30,000 dollars, and hope that we don't have to explain to everyone who just gave us expensive gifts, why we are keeping them in spite of splitting up. I love you madly, truly and deeply. You complete me, which is why after we've broken up I will be unable to function."

I really do need to buy a huge bag in which to pack this attitude of mine. The ones I have aren't gonna be big enough. But I love my friends so freakin' much. And when Susie, my ex 12 year partner, married Bonnie (who I totally adore) last year, I happily took photographs.

dona spring - berkeley icon and great american

It is testament to Berkeley Council Member Dona Spring's formidable political skill and indomitable spirit that her enemies and opponents gave her no breaks and no free passes just because of her unbearably painful disability. Dona, who died of causes related to her severe rheumatoid arthritis lived her life in extraordinary pain and with physical restrictions most of us would collapse under, but never ceased her passionate advocacy for those people who and issues which needed her most.

She died on July 13th and our world is the lesser for it. My own world is far poorer. Dona was the first politician I met here in Berkeley to fully understand and commit to changing the policies at the local animal shelter and her ability to work with two political opponents, Mayor Shirley Dean and Council Member Betty Olds, was key to our slow but steady progress towards changing the face of animal welfare in Berkeley. Without her, I would have never have led the campaign in 2002 for a bond measure to build a new animal shelter. It may seem like a small event in the world, but it was the kind of event Dona Spring believed in. She was a determined and effective advocate for the pieces of the puzzle that make a city whole, and make it accountable to its weak and not just the wealthy.

Dona and I spoke frequently on the phone, her physical impairment making it increasingly hard for her to attend meetings. But her ability to concentrate on a topic, to remember details of conversations and budget discussions years before, her commitment to those she trusted on any given political topic and her personal generosity, her capacity to give credit where due, her enormously optimistic outlook were every bit as important as her gritty determined position taking.

On a personal level her loyalty to me was an enormous gift in an atmosphere as charged as Berkeley's political arena. She often asked my advice on animal related issues and always gave me her most honest response to my sometimes stumbling inexperienced attempts to get real change in this city on the issue of animal welfare.

I loved her, never more so than when one day in a fit of dramatic gusto I lifted an injured dog in my arms and thrust him towards the City Council Members to remind them that animal welfare involved real people and real animals. The next day, Dona sent me $200 towards his care, and every time we spoke she asked me 'How's Calvin?' She lived with cats, not dogs, but her commitment to all sentient beings was her driving force and her passion.

Just two weeks ago, after 6 years of effort, Dona and I congratulated each other on the fact that the city had finally bought a piece of land and was going to build the new animal shelter. I have always believed that there is only one name that belongs on the new building. But the new shelter will have to commit - truly commit to sustain the progress we have made here in Berkeley in becoming the city with the lowest euthanasia rate in California. And to do even better. Nothing less will be worthy of the name Dona Spring.

fences thistle and counting crows at albany bulb

 

 

They built the fence enclosing the 8 acre 'burrowing owl habitat', which by the way, the crows totally love, and the area around it has been flattened in preparation for the 'official' paved trail; they built a fence around what is euphemistically called the Berkeley Meadow, and which no-one visits anymore; they have

constructed vast fences around the 10 acre Tom Bates Regional Sports Complex, named in honour of the Berkeley Mayor who stole 'free' newspapers which endorsed his opponent in 2002, and put in an obscene amount of tarmac to accommodate the private cars which will have to transport the eager little soccer players back and forth because there is no friggin' public transport to the waterfront; they constructed new sports fields in my neighbourhood and put in a brand new fence and a list of rules so long, you wonder whether there was ever any intention of letting local kids use it. There is a whole load of fencing and barricades surrounding the old oak grove which UC Berkeley is going to decimate in order to build a new - you guessed it - sports complex. I don't have a problem with sports or efforts to encourage kids to exercise more. I do have a problem with the obsession with keeping people out of their urban parks.

I don't like fences.

Signs hang from the fence telling us not to enter, as if some sort of secret weapons testing were going on behind the metal gates. Small bunkers of sand have been created which presumably are very popular with little mammals which the burrowing owls like to eat. Except there are no burrowing owls. They are in San Jose apparently. But there are an increasing number of black crows, who seem to love the new habitat. Crows are actually a pretty cool bird, with strong 'family' relationships. But err...they are not endangered. And they are one of the birds most easily infected with West Nile Virus. So, that's cool, huh? In a state that is pretty scared of this disease, we may have created a habitat where it can thrive.

What I find worst about what is happening at the Albany Plateau and Bulb is that people are being disengaged from caring about their park, areas of communal meeting have been destroyed, and where groups of friends would once meet up to walk together with their dogs, picking up garbage and dog poo as they went, the perimeter trail discourages congregation and becomes more like a running track. Paper and plastic debris now blows under the fencing and the Park District has to send a staff member into the locked area to pick up garbage which we, dog walkers, used to pick up as a matter of course during our meanderings. Worse is the way in which 3 months after they locked us out of our park, yellow star thistle, a pretty nasty invasive weed, is beginning to overrun the area.

About four years ago, a group of us, including amazing Park District board member, the late Jean Siri, started pulling the yellow star thistle and collecting it in careful piles for staff to remove when they came to empty the garbage bins - which by the way were first provided by park users, not the park system. For 3 years we have had no yellow star thistle in 'our' park. Elsewhere in the Park District, the bright yellow flower with the jagged minty green stalk is a constant threat to native plants, even causing the district to place signs about the problem. But not in our park where Jan and Sue and the other whippet owners, and me with my brood, used to spend hours carefully controlling it. Not now. The fences now keep us from the places we used to walk.

Does all this sound petty to you? To me, it is about what happens when people no longer feel that they are part of a solution, when 'ownership' and 'investment' in our own neighborhoods, parks, political process is grabbed from our hands as surely as this little 8 acre piece of landfill has been. But I'm sure the Park District and the bright lights who came up with the burrowing owl habitat have already worked out that the fruit fly is a natural predator to the thistle, so probably they are importing a bunch of those while I write this. That'd work, right?

When we started a group called Albany Let It Be to encourage the State Park planners to just let this organic wonderland of a park continue in it's self regulation, we were begging the 'managers' to do what are incapable of doing - to stop trying to manage everything. We failed. But the real failure here is that this is part of a larger process of disenfranchisement. From the very quality of our lives.

limbaugh says most dangerous food is wedding cake

And he should know - he has stomped his way though three of them. Limpfrog, the man who was nominated by his best friend, right wing deadbolt Mark Levin, as a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Lymphbug, the man who used his syndicated talk show to run a schoolboy prank called 'Operation Chaos' to disrupt the Democrat Party primary process, the very same man who paid his housekeeper to obtain huge numbers of prescription painkillers and who used to be a smoking, overweight music DJ before talking trash on the right became so lucrative, the man with three marriages behind him and who seems to have a more profound relationship with his cat than with any woman who might wander into his mansion, and a man who like all the other neo-con hypocrites believes in the 'sanctity' of marriage as between one man and one woman. The man who ranks # 1 in listeners across Amerika said it.

Neo conservatives are, about marriage, like the man who is going to kill his wife and kids in a hostage situation. He doesn't love the mother of his children anymore, but he's damned if anyone else might have the chance to do so, and he stands there with the gun pointed at her head, or standing on the railing of a bridge over a dark river with his kids. Heterosexuals have trashed the 'sanctity' of marriage, but they are gonna fight like crazy to prevent homosexuals trashing it as well. Or, god forbid, improving on it.

Limbaugh made the little smirky comment about the most dangerous food he has eaten in that locker room joke style some guys like to use - this is a guy who has said 'Till death do us part' to three different women - but who somehow thinks that someone else is responsible for the collapse of what conservatives cutely used to call 'family values'. He chose never to bring little limpfrogs into the world in spite of his oozy, rose tinted yearnings and gurglings about his wonderful family life and upbringing. That's what conservatives think marriage is meant to be for - to bring more pitter patter to the world - especially white pitter patter. But perhaps that is the underlying concern here - a deeply racist fear of being 'overrun' by those who breed faster, bigger, better, more. Maybe us white folk are going the way of the white polar bear, we're just getting too big for the ice floe.

My question still stands. Why would we - that's the big tent queer we - want to be part of this?

I saw an ad/promo piece on TV last night about how  young girls are 'feeling the pressure' to conform to standards of beauty, fashion, high achievement, more than ever. A small girl sat on a comfy couch looking at a large screen of changing images which have the effect of making her feel inadequate. The assumption of 'marriage' as a primary choice option for young human beings, still rankles and disturbs me.

Does this blog seem to be meandering somewhere? Anywhere?

You know what it is - when I'm driving in my low consumption car (hey, if I had the money, I'd be driving something way less politically correct - try a 1960's Mercedes 280 SL), I get myself all worked up about  stuff and by the time I've got home all the good blog ideas have merged into some dissembling rant.  And there we have it. I'd rather br driving a Mercedes sports car up the Mendocino Coast, to a cabin overlooking a meadow, down a dirt road (which my Mercedes would handle beautifully), or loading the dogs up into the Ford Escape HYBRID  (which I also don't have) and trekking off to the beach. My home should be filled with light and very little furniture, and the sound of pitter patter everywhere. My neighbour walks through our back yards (there are no fences) with a  new dessert made from plums off my tree, someone is arriving, someone leaves, the animals move with comfort from one sleeping place to another, there is always music in my life, and food is cooking, the phone rings and I hear of an animal in distress. No-one tells me I can't go help it. There are very few books in my house, but there is a teddy bear given to me on the day of my birth. When I visit friends and there is stuff everywhere, I panic, even if it is nice stuff.  And I think that my terror of marriage and my refusal to be  part of it is that once attained it is terrible when put asunder. Heterosexuals can keep it. We can do so much better.

you want a rant - here's a rant

I turned on the radio the other day and some British guy - you know how well informed Brits are - was saying that the polar bears are doing just fine. Up (or down) in some frozen tundra somewhere, the ice pack is strong, and the bears are resilient and all is hunky dory. He wasn't saying there isn't climate change, but he was saying that we don't seem to be as good at destroying the planet as we thought. Then I switched stations and heard that recent polls of self identified 'liberals' indicate a shift in their attitudes about drilling in Alaska since the advent of the $5 gallon of gas (by the way, people in Europe have been paying that and more for years, smiling gently and nodding in that smug 'just you wait' kind of way). Left leaning polar bear lovers have begun to ponder that maybe drilling in ANWR could be accomplished without too much damage. Go back to being a one Subaru family? Use a bike? With all the shopping bags from Whole Foods? Buy a smaller house? Hmmm. I guess it's easy to talk about conservation when you can still fill your oversized SubZero with organic vegetables shipped from everywhere but here, still drive your kids to yoga and still buy cheap goods from China. Conservation is about something else somewhere over the rainbow, but not in Berkeley's backyard.

California is in a drought, the levees are breaking in the Midwest, we're already seeing weather changes which should make your head spin - more tornados, hurricanes, and storms. Weather patterns which used to rotate every hundred years are coming around every twenty; corn is being traded on the futures market like oil; rivers are polluted, drinking water is not drinkable in many parts of the the nation (I admit I am a bottled water drinker - and yes, I know how many millions of gallons of oil it takes to produce the plastic bottles). Virtually every ad on radio stations - even the friggin' 'progressive' Green 960 in SF, is a financial service ad - how to reduce your credit card debt, how to pay back just pennies on what you owe, how to take advantage of someone else's misfortune by buying a foreclosed house.

Please. Don't buy a freakin' foreclosed house.

A woman falls off her chair in a hospital waiting room, writhes around on the floor for half an hour and dies and no-one lifts a proverbial finger. A man is knocked over by a vehicle, the driver speeds away and the passers-by stay on the sidewalk while he lies semi-conscious on the roadway, cars slow down but do not stop. And because increasingly everything we do is captured on film, we can all watch ourselves becoming indifferent on YouTube.

Liberals are gushing over Barack but are already in a state of severe rationalising - his vote on FISA, his enthusiasm for Bush's faith based initiatives, his petulant whiny 'don't pick on me' reactions to McCain, are telling us he is just another freakin' politician. This is not news to me. But I said it before - he is sounding curiously John Kerry like, and if the Republicans hadn't fallen asleep at the wheel and nominated an electable candidate....

John McCain and his beer heiress wife are the weakest presidential team in living memory. McCain took bribes in the last major banking scandal in US history, Cindy McCain is a lobbyist for the alcohol industry. They are losers - very rich losers. Ancient Johnny can't be bothered to pay property taxes. Cindy Mac lobbied against Mothers Against Drunk Drivers who wanted to have alcohol content listed on beer containers. This is going to be the easiest (and only) Democrat victory since Billy knocked down the World War II veteran. In fact the only thing Ancient McCain has going for him is that Bob Dole was 2 years older, at 73, when nominated by the Republicans. Ohmigod - is that the only way Dems can get to the White House - by running against old men injured in battle? Good to know.

So where is this rant going? Nowhere. But I've been altogether too sweet and nice lately.