The Sum Of Our Choices

Ballots for the Washington State 2020 Presidential Primary are due on March 10.  Yesterday, I filled mine out, voting for Elizabeth Warren.  If I had taken my own advice, I should have voted for Warren and mailed it the day that I received it, on February 20.  Regrettably, there was still a bit of the old savvy Political Science major in me who studied the primary calendar and decided that waiting until after Super Tuesday (March 3) might provide additional information.  This was a foolish conceit.

Ever since the Washington primary ballots were finalized in January, I knew that Warren was the only acceptable choice.  She is clearly more qualified than any of the other candidates on the ballot, and she's the only one who has demonstrated an appreciation of the threat that the fascists pose to our government.  The fact that I would even consider some kind of "strategic voting" for someone I didn't prefer to stop someone worse is one of the greatest flaws of allowing the general public to select a party's nominee.

"Electability" is a chimera.  Perhaps, with a massive aggregation of polls and harvested consumer data over a long enough timeline, there is a way to objectively estimate a given candidate's chances to some degree of certainty, but the amount of resources and attention required is beyond individual voters.  A real party would restrict this crucial function to people who have the long-term interests of the party in mind, and who can afford to donate time more than money.  People like me should only be asked which candidate we ourselves prefer, not who we guess most other people prefer.

I have no real idea why the Democratic primary race has shaken out as it has.  I have plenty of suspicions, most of which flatter my prior opinions.  Regardless of the causation, it is a goddamn shame that American electorate cannot recognize excellence and vision and leadership in a woman.  That we insist that only shouty old white men have what it takes to be President is embarrassing and tragic.

In November, I will be voting for the Democratic nominee.  This has never been in doubt.  Politics is a team sport, and I will support my team.  In this verkakte primary, however, I will not give my support to either of the decrepit blowhards left in the race.  My vote goes to the only adult on the ballot, in lamentation of how stupidly we have let misogyny hobble us.

Happy International Women's Day.

The Time For Honoring Yourself Will Soon Be At An End

Why Couldn't I Have THAT Day?

Reclamation

This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Moments Out Of Time

In 1990, I thought I might want to be a film critic. Having a proper deference to academic-sounding writing but no actual education in or exposure to film theory, I picked up a serious-looking magazine called Film Comment. Some of the articles were impenetrable, some were intriguing, and some were, well, wrong-headed. Mostly they were about films and filmmakers I had never heard of. I felt chastened by this, but not as much as I might have. But I was hooked by one item, which contributed to me subscribing for several years (the number of periodicals that I have ever subscribed to in my life can be counted on the fingers of one hand). This feature was called "Moments Out Of Time." It consisted of several short entries—most only a single sentence—describing a single image, sound, expression, movement, or dialogue from a single scene from a recent film that stuck with the viewer. The text-to-image ratio of Film Comment was much higher than the other magazines in the "Entertainment" section of the rack (a commendable quality I thought then and still think), but the choppy, USA-Today-esque appearance of this feature (the titles were boldfaced) was comforting to the casual reader, and even my intellectual puritanism was softened by it.

The chief virtue of "Moments Out Of Time" was that it demonstrated that even critics deeply immersed in the history of foreign cinema waves are seized by the same moments and emotions that make cinema compelling to everyone else. Years before the internet and meme culture came along, here were serious film scholars saying they wanted everyone to know they can't stop thinking about "the way Alec Baldwin lets Junior’s mouth fall open, during moments of repose, in Miami Blues."

Imagine my delight, then, as I discovered that someone had archived all the entries in the "Moments Out Of Time" series. When VacuumSlayer at LGM made a post soliciting 20 films that "stuck with you," I knew exactly what she meant. Here's what I came up with. They aren't the "top 20," my favorite 20, or the most recent 20. They're the first 20 that come to mind and for which I have ready access to representative images.

Welpschmerz

The lethargic ache of watching increasingly outrageous events transpire without hope of change or energy for comment.

Against Entropy

John M. Ford was an author and a game designer. His PARANOIA adventure Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues was, like almost all PARANOIA works, a delight to read, but it was also a fiendishly satisfying adventure to run and play.

Here is one of Ford's sonnets, Against Entropy:

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

My Advice Is Worth Heeding

Not Gonna End Well

This is actually the most dangerous time.