FunctionalAmbivalent

As Good a Day as Any

For the last five years, more or less, I've blogged almost every day. It takes time, at least a couple of hours a day, to do what I've done here.

I started blogging when blogging was relatively new because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I thought blogging was something that I -- a professional communicator -- should know about, and it was. I learned a lot doing this, and I kept at it longer than I expected because I enjoyed it. Functional/Ambivalent was the first time in my life I had a public forum without an editor or boss of some kind telling me what to do. (I understand the value of editors a lot more now.) I wrote about whatever interested me at the time, no matter how inappropriate it might seem, and if you look back through the work I've posted here you'll see both creative and ideological evolution over time.

A key aspect of that evolution has been my interaction with my audience. There are some smart, funny people out there who've taken the time to comment on this blog, sometimes agreeing but mostly disagreeing with what I have to say. My main success metric on this blog was not traffic but comments, and believe me when I say that every single comment brought me some small measure of joy. I enjoyed the challenges you offered and, for most of the life of this blog, the differing opinions.

I'm going to end Functional/Ambivalent today for several reasons, the most important of which is that I have moved on to other creative projects and the time this blog demands is simply not time I can afford to spend. I've been working, for the last five months, on a book proposal. The proposal is one part of a year-long attempt to change my life, to leverage what I've done the last few years -- including this blog -- to return to my roots as a professional writer (though I remain involved in a couple of entrepreneurial ventures). In support of that, I've started and need to establish another blog on another subject. That blog is past the experimental stage and needs my full attention, but I'm spending too much of my time over here on F/A, which I love but which is no more useful to my grand plan than is playing golf or reading comic books. I've known for months that F/A was going to have to go; today is as good a day as any to pull the plug.

I want to thank you all for your time and attention and to tell each and everyone one of you how much you've improved me. I'm going to leave F/A up for a while, but I'm turning off comments because the spammers have already set in. Please don't imagine that means I want to cut myself off from the friends I've made here. You can reach me at [email protected], if you like. I'll tell you about my other project, which is dissimilar to F/A in the extreme and still finding its voice. (Perhaps you'll come help me with that.) I'll even pierce my veil of anonymity and invite you to be my Facebook friend, beause I'd really like to stay in touch. 

Aside from that, I don't know what to say. Except, again, thanks.

Magic Number

Newt Gingrich has been married three times. Rush Limbaugh has been married three times. And the Weekly Standard's newest defender of traditional marriage has been married three times.

Angry, irrational, and -- apparently -- unlivable: America's conservative elite.

I, Personally, Sigh In Relief

Watching Dick Cheney's speech today, I find myself marveling not at how he and President Bush screwed things up, but that things aren't even worse than they are.

My god; the man is totally disengaged from reality, seems utterly incapable of learning, and clearly doesn't have a clue about what it is that makes the United States the most powerful and influential nation in the world. That he was, as they say, a heartbeat away from the presidency is terrifying.

Another Job I Think I Could Do

Gwyneth Paltrow's boob checker.

Jesus That Goes Crunch

Beliefnet reports a sudden outbreak of Cheetos shaped like Jesus, not surprisingly in the completely sane state of Texas.

Each Nation To Its Own Electoral Traditions

Locked in a dead heat two weeks before the election, President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is buying votes, handing out money and potatoes at campaign rallies.

My Question Is: Who Did This First, and Why?

Utah adolescent Fin Keheler wants Guinness to verify a new world record.

My Worst Nightmare: A Kentucky Mall Person With a Gun

Kentucky's Constitution requires the election of a country constable, though the archaic position no longer has duties and pays only $100 a month. Still, the Constitution gives constables certain powers, including the power to arrest people and carry a gun.

The last few constables of Jefferson County, where I live, have run their election campaigns as a kind of beer-powered joke, and once in office have cashed their meager paychecks and not done much else.

Yeah, well, now we've got a duly elected constable who takes the job seriously. He patrols in a tricked-out "police car" and has catalog-shopped a kind of uniform. He's "deputizing" volunteer toughs who, it turns out, are convicted felons. The County Sheriff thinks the county constable ought to be reined in, but there's nothing anyone can do about it without changing the Constitution.

Watch the video here. It's funny, as long as you're safely out of range.

The Worst Kind of Chicken

I have not one iota of doubt that closing the prison at Guantanamo and bringing the accused terrorists there to the United States for trial and imprisonment is the right thing to do. The value of the United States to the world depends upon us being a free country under the rule of law, strong and brave and better than the rest. Guantanamo is a monument to everything this country isn't, and shouldn't be.

I believe that the Republican Party of today generally disdains the power of our freedoms. I believe that most Republicans would sacrifice that which gives this country value. They defend torture and willingly give the Bush Administration a pass on all kinds of extralegal activities that are modern version of the prerogatives enjoyed by the King of England in colonial times. I believe that the underlying reason for Republican willingness to jettison our freedoms is physical fear.

The underlying Republican view is that we're a nation of chickens. Their political strategy is to do what they can to make us more afraid.

All of that said, physical fear is at least something I understand. I get how it can bend a person's thinking. And I get the trauma 9/11 visited on this country, and the horror of terrorist attack and murder. I don't respect those who advocate torture and Executive Branch lawlessness. I believe they're selling our country out, making it weaker and less worthwhile. But I understand their motivations on a human level.

Which brings me to Democrats and, in particular, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Yesterday, Harry Reid sold this country out, deciding that it would be better to maintain the open wound of Gitmo than to take a political risk in order to re-assert the greatness of the United States.

I understand physical fear and the way it can make people do things they would never otherwise do. I don't understand rich, powerful people with locked-in pensions and perpetual stature selling out their country for the sake of preserving their jobs. Not their lives: their jobs.

That's selling this country cheap.

Torture and lawlessness are not what this country is about, and the Republican tendency to justify both out of physical fear is a disgrace. What Harry Reid and his Democratic colleagues are doing right now is disgrace squared. If Republicans are now habitually putting party above country, Reid and the craven Democrats who joined him have taken self-interest to a whole new level. They're putting themselves above both party and country, out of fear not for their lives, but for their careers.

Freedom, people like to say, isn't free. It takes courage and sacrifice. We ask our troops to sacrifice every day, and we pretend to honor that even as we, ourselves, refuse to take even small risks to preserve our nation. What Harry Reid has done is so small, so infinitesimal in spirit and patriotism that is comes close to constituting treason. Certainly, it's a violation of his oath of office. The first job of those in office in the United States is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. Reid has failed utterly to do that, sacrificing the Constitution for the sake of his own stature. For that, he should be stripped of that stature, removed first as Majority Leader and, when his term is up, Senator.

More than that, he reminds us why we need to fully and publicly investigate the abuses of the post-9/11 period. It's not about condemnation of the Bush Administration. It's about forever excising the cancer of lawlessness that has infected our government, and that Reid wants to enable for the sake of heading off a 30 second attack ad in his next campaign. That cancer is not just the biggest threat to the survival of this country; it's also the biggest threat to this country's value to the world.

OK, So There's No Triple Crown Chance This Year. I've Got Another Idea.

Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird is what a friend of mine calls a "story horse." The story of Mine That Bird is more compelling than the horse itself.

After winning the Derby, changing jockeys, and coming in a close, closing second in the Preakness, Mine That Bird Finds himself in a peculiar position. First, if he loses the Belmont, he maybe goes down as a one-hit-wonder, a fluke like many to come before who had just one great day and then faded back into oblivion. That's a story Mine That Bird's Owners -- and racing in general -- should want to avoid almost no matter what the cost.

Second, Mine That Bird doesn't have a jockey. Mike Smith, who rode the gelding in the Preakness, is already booked to ride another horse in a California race the day of the Belmont.

So here's how I think we can solve both of those problems and write a next chapter for Mine That Bird that people will remember forever: the owners and trainer should hire me to ride the horse in the Belmont. That's right: me. It could be like one of those promotional contests to find a blogger to live in an island paradise for a year, except that there wouldn't be a contest. There would just be me.

The story is made even better because I haven't ridden a horse since fifth grade and I weigh as much as three or four jockeys. Sometimes the Belmont only starts five horses; I could eat an extra couple of meals a day for the next two weeks, put on another 80 or 90 pounds, and the whole thing could be promoted as "one man outweighs the field."

Now that would be a story, and you'd sell a million posters of me dressed up as a jockey.

Another upside: if the network covered the race from start to finish -- that is, until all the horses finished -- the race would surely last long enough that they could sell some commercial time along the backstretch. Upon returning from commercial, they could show Mine That Bird and me proceeding around the far turn at a stately pace, perhaps with me walking alongside the horse.

I'm serious about this. I think it could be big.

'Roid Rush

Preparing for the Belgian National Championship, bodybuilders were pumping up when drug testers arrived to take blood samples. What happened next?

A doping official says bodybuilders just grabbed their gear and ran off when he came into the room.

Must need a breath mint.

A Most Pleasant Daydream

Palin/Steele 2012.

Belaboring the Obvious, Headline Edition

Headline on MSNBC:

GM Bankruptcy Would Be Complex, Painful

Who would have imagined?
Interestingly, on the homepage the headline reads:

GM Bankruptcy Could Be Complex, Painful

Apparently, a glimmer of optimism is necessary to make the front page.

Unclear On Any Concept Whatsoever

Republicans have introduced legislation to declare 2010 The Year of the Bible.

Two Cheers For Major League Baseball

Responding to fan complaints that playoff games routinely run past midnight, making it impossible for anyone in the eastern time zone under the age of 16 or over the age of 55 to watch, MLB has moved the start-times up to 7:57 PM eastern time. MLB claims that 40 minutes earlier, but by my math it's more like 30.

Either way: whoop-de-doo.

By the time you get through the extended commercial breaks, games still don't finish until after midnight. And should a game turn out to be really exciting, the walk-off home run people should be talking about 20 years later will be seen by relatively few viewers. Those viewers will likely be people who are already completely dedicated to baseball, and the recruitment of new fans will continue to dwindle.

When my kids were younger it was impossible for them to stay up past about the third inning. That's like going to a play and leaving after Act One. After a while, you wonder what all the fuss is about. Baseball's desire to get their games into west coast prime time certainly cured my kids of any interest in the sport, and is doubtless doing the same for thousands upon thousands of others.

The short-sightedness of baseball owners is as appalling as it is consistent. Remember: this is the same group that refused to let radio broadcast games, since it would cause people to stay home from the park. They resisted television for the same reason, for years making sure that people would only see games they weren't interested in. Now they're limiting the growth of their potential fan base in order to make a few short-term bucks.

The result of all this is going to be: more soccer. Jeez I hate soccer.