Someone asks why I haven’t written anything funny for a long time, I answered I wasn’t aware I ever had written anything funny. They mentioned the Dr. Brinkley piece, I said I saw that as an attempt at straight reportage. They mentioned the Aphrogeeziacs piece (lost link) and the Truck Nutz pieces, I said the same. As a male blogger on a feminist blog I feel it’s necessary to report on some of the more obvious obsessions of the gender I’m supposed to be a member of. And it’s generally a question of members. Though, for me, that’s usually more like practicing amateur manthropology.
There is, though, an unmistakable crankiness in the air. I first started feeling it during the long health care fight last year. The let down of going from a big win in an election to the inevitable series of disappointments that having your candidates in power is a big part of it. And I was certainly as let down as anyone. The gloom and doom for Democrats in the media that never really stopped has intensified along with the growing depression that breaks out in dyspeptic and choleric manifestations on the blogs, even among allies. Even the more cheerful of us is showing the strain, though in others such as myself that might be hardly noticeable.
When I was a student I was known for having a dead pan expression that went with my flat, inland, Western-Maine accent, and that was among a population predominantly consisting of laconic New Englanders. They said I never looked ruffled as I played, no matter what the piece was and I played some really emotional pieces. Apparently no matter the terror and turmoil I felt, I never showed it. They said I could bore paint to death when I read a paper in a seminar class. The effect apparently was enough to make some people suspect I was overly calm. Readers of this blog will know that was mistaken but we didn’t have blogs back then, they could see and hear me.
By the way, a lot of the time when people apparently read angry, I don’t feel angry. Some of the time, apparently, what I intend as thoroughness or emphisis, people take as anger. I’m not feeling it most of the time, though some times I can’t deny I do on occasion. Even giving in to crankiness at times, lately related to the arthritic-allergic reaction to a tetanus shot I got last month. Not to mention the bill which included a charge of three hundred dollars for a grand total of four stitches in my hand. Though that will risk reopening old grievances over the health care bill.
Among the other things that is really making me angry right now is how the House of Representatives and the Senate are being all lumped together to take the blame for the obstruction of the Republican-blue dog majority in the Senate. I am especially infuriated that Nancy Pelosi is getting regularly slammed by alleged liberals on that count. There are about four hundred bills which Nancy Pelosi has gotten passed in the house that are stalled in the Senate. Four hundred bills, many of them important ones for which she and her House colleagues have done the heavy lifting and the pushing only to have the Senate block them. Now, hearing the most progressive person ever to hold one of the leadership positions in the Federal government being slammed for her record of achievement BY LIBERALS ON BLOGS really makes me angry. I have no illusions as to why that is, it is because Nancy Pelosi is the first WOMAN to hold the position.
If you want to know what really can make me steam, that’s it. That other stuff, multiverses, the fight over the existence of God, that’s just trivia of no real importance. I am sure that either or both will still be there or not no matter what is said about them on the entire world body of blogs. Though I’m really, really tempted to write a long, overly calm, piece about the imprecise meaning of the word “existence”.
One of the first important provisions of the Health Care bill is due to go into effect this month, the ban on denying children coverage on the excuse of pre-existing conditions. That is something we should celebrate loudly and forcefully and we should point out it is one of the things that Republicans will undermine in a de facto effort to kill it. If that isn’t heavily announced and promoted, it could make me really cranky.