Dear Somalian Pen-pal

Dear Somalian Pen-pal¹,

Yesterday was SO hard. I went to the store and they didn't have any pumpkins left. So I called another grocery store and they said they still had some. Then when I got to the other grocery store, which was like, a full mile away, they didn't have pumpkins either. Its like the whole culture is coming down around my ears, I swear!

I hope tomorrow is easier,
Josiah


¹This meme came from a Shakespearian Theater of some kind, but it came through a friend of a friend so I'm not sure beyond that. 

Gerrymandering: A visual guide

‎"Gerrymander: to divide (a territorial unit) into election districts to give one political party an electoral majority in a large number of districts while concentrating the voting strength of the opposition in as few districts as possible."

Just look at the link below and look at Florida (for example), or pretty much any state and think about the fact that congressional districts are supposed to be populations of people that should be represented together by one person.

http://elections.nytimes.com/2010/house

Philosophically Defensible

I have recently decided what makes for philosophically defensible position:

A position is philosophically defensible if the successful counter argument against that position lasts longer then the attention span of your preferred audience. 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Exist

I have a unusual and, as far as I know, unexpressed observation about DADT. This is ultimately about the causes of homophobia, not effects. I am not attempting to diminish the reality of bigotry, but to help explain, in emotionally neutral terms, some of bigotry's causes.

My central claim is that a causal factor behind DADT is that the US Military finds it appropriate and necessary to limit the amount of sex (the act) that its members have, regardless of sexual orientation. Whether or not that is appropriate or whether the negative outcomes that they are concerned about even exist are open questions. Let's have Colonel Hardcore explain the problem that I'm talking about.

"Imagine, if you will, a cluster of large dorm buildings with about a thousand 18 to 22-year-olds. All of these young adults are a) compelled to be in good physical condition and b) ignorant enough to enlist in the military. These are people who lack the judgment to feel bad about voting for G. W. Bush and lack the experience to know not to sleep with roommates. These young adults are people who need to be able to serve side by side in life and death situations. Good order and discipline will be negatively affected by the level of drama (STDs, unwanted pregnancies, sexual assaults, etc) that would result from the amount of poor judgment sexual activity that would result from letting these people at each other." -Colonel Hardcore

That is an explicit description of an attitude that I believe is almost entirely implicit. I don't think that the powers-that-be give this dynamic any thought. The sexes are separated long before there are any real differences, and these kinds of paternal impulses can be seen not just in the military but in boarding schools and even nursing homes.

So the US Military addresses this "problem" of sexual activity among the enlisted ranks by separation of the sexes. Now for all of you out there for whom queer folk are part of your day to day considerations, you know how absurd this tactic is. Especially for all of you who were closeted in high school, not letting people of the opposite sex sleep over really wasn't any restriction on your sexual activity at all. But within the historical context of US Military leadership, homosexuality is practically unthinkable.

Homosexuality has been such a basic wrong in this context that no consideration of it needed to be taken into consideration. So this totally naive maneuver of separating men and women in all pantsless environments is a powerful, fair, effective, and simple anti-sexuality maneuver.

Now looking at the situation from the perspective of Colonel Hardcore: You've been told that you are no longer allowed to be homophobic, and you're the kind of guy who is willing to fight, kill or die when ordered, so just treating people fairly when you don't want to isn't a particularly difficult challenge. But now you must treat gay and straight enlisted members equally, but you still think it is important to keep all of these people from having sex with each other. But how do you do it? The tactic of separating the sexes is now absurd on the face of it.

Here we see one of the driving forces of support for DADT coming not from homophobia, but from a hostility toward sexuality generally, and an inablility to separate potential sexual partners once you let queers into the picture. The name of the policy itself points at this problem. The policy isn't "No Fags, No Dykes" nor is it "Two men touching is an abomination before God." It's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." The powers-that-be don't really care if homosexuals serve. But if homosexuals come out of the closet, certain puritanical ideas become untenable.

The military's separation of the sexes fails to make sense the moment you admit the existence of homosexuals. It isn't just that people might be looking at you in a sexy way when you're in the shower¹, but that the very existence of gays in uniform turns this separation of the sexes into total bullshit.

I think this is one of the driving forces behind institutional homophobia generally. I don't think that people necessarily know this, or would admit to it even if confronted. For people who believe that sex is generally a sin, transforming a formerly chaste space, like a locker room, into a place where there could be even the simplest type of attraction makes that place unsafe and gross, EVEN IF you are not homophobic.

But notice, this discomfort is dependent, not on homophobia itself, but on erotophobia. It is the fear of sexual activity generally and the separation of the sexes method of controlling it, which are undermined by the mere existence of LGBT people. The idea that one is no longer safe from sexuality in a public restroom is a large part of the problem. If everyone were straight and dressed according to gender norms, then those who wanted to prevent sexuality could easily make that happen by separating the boys from the girls. So queerness is a threat to a more general puritanical intention. The existence and presence of queer kids ruins the party, not because they are bad party goers, but because they make the invite list impossible to handle.

The point of all of this is not just about my observation about the military, but about how to promote gay rights generally. Toward that end, I am trying to point out that at least some structural homophobia is driven by erotophobia that has nothing to do with one's feelings about orientation or gender. One of the causal factors in institutional homophobia, according to this argument, has nothing to do with homosexuality. The advancement of gay rights will move in lock step with sexual freedom to one extent or another, because the powers-that-be cannot control sex while homosexuals are present. So they are going to fight to maintain exclusion of queers, even beyond having negative feelings towards queers.

I don't really know what to make of this conclusion, other than to point it out to folks. I am not a gay rights activist, merely a gay rights supporter. I don't know what to do, but I thought this observation might help people see part of why the powers-that-be seem so intractable, even when they don't seem specifically hostile.


¹Which is a non-issue for many reasons.

In further episodes of yelling at strangers on the train...

Dear creepy dude,

I was screaming at you because you were leaning WAY to close to two ladies in succession and trying to talk to them about what I what they were reading. If you had noticed the fact they were cringing away from you, or that they put there head phones back on immediately after every sentence, or the grimace of discomfort that they had on their face when you interrupted them, or just the basic fact that they were reading with headphones on might have alerted you to the fact that they did not want to talk to you or anyone else.

Now, you were clearly not globally dysfunctional. You had a laptop and a guitar and a suit and tie. There is clearly an environment in which you function. But on the train, in this town, don't creep on ladies, please. There are so many reasons not to, but I'm going to give you mine: it fills me with an uncomfortably intense desire to cave your balding head in. Truly, this kind of behavior fills me with a very unpleasant desire to do violence to you that I would really rather not experience.

REALLY bad economics and philosophy jokes

"Alan Gruespan": Chairman of the Federal Reserve who is correct about the economy before 2008 and wrong afterward.

*

**

***

**

*

Obscurism: An umbrella term for any collection of mutually incompatible philosophical schools of thought which you can't tell apart. 

  

Deep Obscurism: An umbrella term for any collection of mutually incompatible philosophical schools of thought which neither you nor anyone you know can tell apart. 

Deep Dark Obscurism: An umbrella term for any collection of mutually incompatible philosophical schools of thought which neither you nor anyone nor anyone they know can tell apart. 

Perfect Obscurism: An umbrella term for any collection of mutually incompatible philosophical schools of thought which no one can tell apart. 

There are two things about the UK that are interesting and pertinent to this story. First, they have the same squirrels in the UK that we do in the states and second, the British are better at dogs then we are. The squirrels, I'm willing to grant isn't a life altering piece of news. But watching an entire city's worth of dogs off leash, behaving well, coming when called, and being cleaned up after spoke to a level of functional civility that was rather moving.

I was in England with two of my friends to see a "music" festival that got canceled right before we left. This left us with two solid weeks of London with no plans, and in my case no money.¹ Two weeks of walking around a really great city, people watching, buying extraordinarily expensive coffee, window shopping, and wishing that ATM's would tell me exactly how broke I was.

We were staying near Hyde Park and on the morning before we flew home we went for a morning constitutional. We took our take-away beverages of choice out with us for a short walk through the park. I was on high alert for one last good story. Sure I had seen a man scratch with his foreskin while wearing a skull mask; and I had lost 10lbs in two weeks because I was too broke to eat regularly and walked all day, everyday; and there was the time I was involved in giving north of 5 quid in change to a hobo.² But I remember stories instead of taking pictures so I am always looking for something to talk about.

So we saw a woman "walking" a standard poodle. Now I have a soft spot in my heart for the breed as I had one when I was a kid. He was energetic, too energetic. So energetic in fact that he had seizures, which is basically the last step in excitement before spontaneous combustion. This dog looked like he was on the edge of seizing. He was probably the worst behaved dog in all of London. And he was fruitlessly chasing squirrels while his owner yelled for him to behave like every other blessed dog on the island.

As we got closer to the woman and her dog, it became increasingly clear that the woman had a voice that was deep and resonant in a way that was at odds with her hyper-feminine outfit. Which was fine, trannies need to walk their dogs too. And a standard poodle seems pitch perfect, with its working dog function and its crazy flamboyant hair cut.

What ultimately let us catch up with the woman and her dog, was that the poodle had finally treed a squirrel. The dog's earlier efforts had been so manic and ineffectual that the squirrels had escaped with such thoroughness that even the poodle knew to give up and move on. But it had treed this one squirrel and was dead set on barking up this tree, forever. And as we got close enough to confirm our gendered suspicions we noticed something else.

The transvestite's dog was barking up the wrong tree.

Let that sink in.

Sometimes the universe provides. It presents you with a situation that you merely need to put into simple words. There is no work, no reframing, no setting up of subtle allusions, it's just a joke waiting to be stated.

¹I was in some perfect storm of negative cash flow at the time and was totally broke, but thats not really part of this story.

²I very distinctly remember my friend making this mistake, he distinctly remembers me doing it.

So I'm actually going to do this now.

So at the advice of someone who wouldn't normally give said same I am going to try this blogging thing.

My hope is to put out something interesting every week. Old stories, new observations, interesting links, ramble-tastic essay things. That is what I expect to be able to produce. If you know me well expect repeats, sorry.

Here is a list of working titles that I have been saving up for this very occasion. For the record I don't know what some of these were supposed to be about, I hardly expect you to.

Cake ; Fruit bowl : Strong meme ; Good meme.

Cognitive Dissonance as conflicts in self explanation.

The problem of mis-categorized CD's.

The sad sad story of Sgt. Devito.

A transvestite walks her dog in London, cliche ensues.

Autistic Poetry.

Time as an unscarce good, immortality and economics.

Disaster Behavior and Shoplifting, economics and extreme circumstances.

Controlling Sex, why "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is more difficult for the military then you think.

Childhood Obesity and Helicopter parents.

A culture of exceptions; health care and feeling bad about the poor.

Christmas contracts, getting out of buying useless shit for people you love without being shitty.

There you go, those are some of the things I might try and write, let me know if you there is one that sounds like the one that you want to read.