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Sunday, October 26, 2014

Blahg

Eric and I voted last week by mail. I've been finding it difficult to blog this week. A whole lot of public discourse is even more unbearably stupid than it usually is, for which the smug superficiality of Chuck Todd seems to me to be more emblematic than even the outright ugly deceptions of hate talk and Fox. I know that a whole lot of people are not going to vote in the midterms who then will complain about political problems that would have been alleviated had they voted. Blogging as a practice of public intellectuality attesting to faith in emancipatory rhetoric is rather hard for me to maintain in times like these. That's my deficiency, but there it is. For what it's worth, I'll say again what I have said so often before: voting is not enough but it is nonetheless indispensable, no party nor politician is adequate to our problems but the difference between bad and worse makes enough of a difference that indifference to it is indefensible. As the nearness of the election deranges more and more realtime media I find I've been retreating into DVD marathons (I've been watching season after season of Star Trek; Voyager, which remains my favorite Trek, and the Complete Mapp and Lucia), or listening to music (Janelle Monae is still my favorite, but I'm also liking Kimbra and Adore Delano). Have you voted yet? How are you coping with the inevitable demoralization of mid-terms? What are you watching or listening to?

4 comments:

Esebian said...

In this trying times for the nation, I have to ask you:

You really like the Trek series with the most inconsistently written characters and highest amount of idiot plots aside from Enterprise the most? WAAAAAAAT

Chad Lott said...

The psychedelic inspired outlaw country sound of Sturgill Simpson has been on heavy rotation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWx6csgGkg4

As has the queer positive New Orleans sound of Hurray for the Riff Raff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smu5P06DUlo

Roald said...

Vote upcoming, coping in progress. Coping includes hoping for good results with respect to local/state races and measures, the music of Carole King and Led Zeppelin, and Portlandia binges.

At this point, just the verbal mention of the word "gridlock" is simply painful.

Dale Carrico said...

Portlandia is like Breakfast at Tiffany's -- time after time I keep watching it to make me laugh and always end up feeling rather sad.