42

Wow, I'm 42. How'd THAT even happen? Only 8 years from 50? Sheesh. That's crazy. Obviously, a lot can happen in 8 years -- B1 will be 18 (*choke*). Anyway, crazy stuff. B1 was sweet; he could tell I was frustrated about stuff yesterday (nothing to do with my birthday, just job stuff), and as I was taking the boys to their sitter, he gave me a comforting hug. It was such a sweet, compassionate gesture. I told him I appreciated that. It was clearly a hug for hug's sake.

I didn't take off, didn't do the whole "work on the birthday" thing. How Stoic of me. Baha!

I baked a German chocolate cake for myself; no candles, no birthday wishes. Just cake the boys and I shared. Anyway, onward and upward for my 42-year-old self!

The Cabin in the Woods (2012)

I saw "The Cabin in the Woods" yesterday, and I don't think it was really the Second Coming of Horror that it was billed as being. I understand that when Joss Whedon cranks something out, his dedicated fan base/cult, much like the fans of Wes Anderson, will breathlessly gather and sing the praises for his work, rendering it critically bulletproof.

Not going to go into the movie, lest there be spoilers to it -- but while I enjoyed the movie well enough, I wasn't blown away by it. It's hard to put it into words, exactly. I would classify it more as a horror-comedy than a de facto horror movie (although there were certainly horrific moments to it, they're all fairly wryly delivered, with that trademark Whedonian smirking smugness framed by an affably earnest self-consciousness that characterizes a lot of his work, and is likely why it's popular with a given group of people).

I didn't find it terribly surprising, found it hard to really shocked by anything in it. I dunno. I think it'll be a tempest in a teapot; it comes off as a kind of critical takedown of Horror as a genre without actually getting at what's horrific (and cathartic) about Horror. The very nature of Horror implies an ineffability, a sense of the sublime -- it's hard to be snidely aware of the sublime, really, and this movie tries to kind of square that circle -- to try to invoke this otherworldly dread while at the same time smugly having a "Relax, I'm just joking" kind of mindset to it that undermines the former.

There are enough Whedon groupies out there for this to likely do reasonably well, or be a cult movie or whatever. But unlike, say, "Evil Dead," which managed to actually channel some real dread, this movie was just sort of an exercise in something else. Like a group of people congratulating each other on how smart they all are. It's like how nobody thinks advertising (or propaganda) affects them -- if you ever see surveys where people are asked about advertising, nobody ever admits that advertising influences their decision-making.

So there is this multibillion-dollar industry that inundates our world, surrounds and enfolds it, whose entire purpose is to manipulate, cajole, wheedle, seduce, and persuade you -- something as omnipresent as water is to fish -- and you're unaffected by it? Immune to it? Why? Because you're too smart to be affected by something like that, you know when you're being influenced. Riiiight. Pat yourself on the back one more time, as you're off buying whatever it is you were persuaded to buy.

That is what this movie felt like. An hour-and-45-minute mutual back-patting from a creator of a particular type of entertainment to his acolytes -- there's nothing to be afraid of, because we already know everything there is to know about Horror, and we're just too smart to be affected by it, too worldly and jaded to be influenced by something as retrograde and yucky as Horror. Riiiiight.

That said, I enjoyed the movie reasonably well; I just didn't think it was half as smart as it (or its audience) thought it was.

(Laundry) Basket Case

Urg. I've put off laundry all week. Tomorrow morning. Gotta get it done! Normally I'm pretty good about keeping up with it, but this week I just kept putting it off. It's not bad, yet. Four loads, maybe five. But I just don't like getting behind on that.

I've been biking this week, even though it's been frickin' cold. Still, I don't mind getting a jump on my bike season; last year, I rode until November, so, starting in late March/early April means I'll have about eight months of biking this season, assuming my bike endures. I've bitched about it before, but my Trek 7300 has been a constant disappointment to me. Some people love them, but I vastly preferred my old Specialized Hardrock to my Trek, which has proven to be a finicky and high-maintenance set of wheels. And given that I've just been doing city riding with it, not scaling up mountains or anything, I've been disappointed by the fussiness of this bike. I'm sure I've put more than the actual value of the bike into it, in terms of repairs and modifications.

En garde!

Am glad the radiators are still on -- it's been frickin' cold in the city the past week. Usually, "March Madness" kicks in and they turn off the radiators, but it's been cold enough to warrant having the heat on. I've still been biking to work, but have bundled a bit. The real issue is the wind -- those blustery contrary winds are a major buzzkill.

I got the boys a couple more Nerf foam weapons; those are damned fun -- the Marauder sword, which, for a kid, is a tidy two-handed sword (hell, it's a two-handed sword for a grown-up, too, but the blade length is more akin to a broadsword). B2 is decidedly keen for the big sword, which is funny in his hands. B1 is fond of the Battlemaster mace/axe (my Dwarvish boy, naturally). I use the Vantage "short swords" -- which really aren't short swords, but are at least close to fencing swords in length, so I use them that wasy. They are fun; I like them better than the Nerf guns (which are also fun).

But the foam weapons are just a blast, and it's funny to watch the boys go after me with them, or each other. B1, as ever, is the gentle giant, but he has the best "game face" -- his expression is intimidatingly formidable, if you didn't realize what a kind and gentle person he is behind that facade. That serves him well, I've seen.

B2 is, as ever, the wild child, the fighting whirlwind -- speedy and naturally athletic, and prone to whacking you with the sword faster than you can react, or to "dying" dramatically. I swear that B2 enjoys pratfalling as much as he enjoys fighting -- he takes these great dives on the floor. As ever, the flamboyant, scrappy actor. And when they doubleteam me, it's fun, too -- I teach them the rudiments of fencing and kendo, while they try like hell to get me.

Jesus Christ

Easter. Meh. It bores me so much that I can hardly even blog about it. I love Halloween and enjoy Christmas, but Easter? It's just sort of there. I don't do Easter Bunny shenanigans with the boys -- Exene's family usually goes over the top with Easter baskets and what-not, anyway, so I tend to not do it. And since I don't inflict Christianity on the boys, the whole "miracle of the Resurrection" jazz doesn't come into it, either. I mean, call it cynicism or skepticism, but even today, people believe that Elvis was still alive, or Jim Morrison, or whomever, or any number of urban legends.

We're supposed to believe that a few thousand years ago, when people were eminently more reasonable, intellectual, and rational than they are today (*choke*) that whatever happened to Jesus was the literal truth that actually happened? 100% factual? Right. It's like playing a game of Telephone and being forced to accept the answer on down the line....

"I really like cabbage."
"He really likes cabbage."
"I'm related to Charles Babbage?"
"His dad likes to play cribbage."
"His team's going to scrimmage."
"We forgot to get our luggage?"
"I don't have any postage!"
"They're taking me hostage!"

That is everyday human experience, that is how things actually roll. Christianity is no different. Maybe Jesus's followers, piqued at the loss of their prophet at Roman hands, wanted to give him a good Jewish burial, so they went to the crypt where he was kept, rolled the stone aside, and spirited away his body for a proper burial, as a way of sticking it to Rome. Then the ever-excitable Mary Magdalene comes along, sees the rock rolled aside, and puts that whore's brain of hers to work and is like "Holy SHIT! He's been resurrected!" I mean, everybody knows to trust the words of a prostitute, right? They are always reliable and unbiased sources of information about all manner of things. And so it goes.

The empiricist in me always quibbled about the stone being rolled aside -- since when does a spirit need to roll a stone aside, anyway? Insubstantial, right? The only reason the stone's rolled aside is to be able to say "Look! Nobody inside!" Because if the stone hadn't been rolled aside, there'd be the assumption that Jesus's remains were still in there. So, of course the stone's rolled aside. Because the spirit wanted to be sure you believed in the miracle of what had happened. Mmm hmm.

Maybe something happened, but the odds are far more likely that nothing happened, and people, in their typically credible way of being, wove elaborate mental and emotional tapestries around a particular situation in order to make themselves feel better. And, again, as I say, roll the clock back 2000 years or so, and you find people who are even more credulous and superstitious then than they are today, and it becomes not only likely, but an inevitability that something like that happens.

And then the logic of the Big Lie comes into it, where people then depend on the buy-in, or worse, the faith meme comes into it, where people just turn off their powers of reason and uncritically accept the Big Lie without question, and then the snowball can just keep rolling down the mountainside of history, at least until the capacity to reason, reflect, critique, and objectively assess is rediscovered.

Anyway, blah blah blah. Easter. Yeah, got it.

Foodage and Flora

Nearly recovered from the B1 Bug. I wasn't blogging the past couple of days because sickblogging is worse than even everyday blogging. "Still stick. Bleah." You know, that kind of thing.

Going to take the boys grocery shopping today. They're stoked, since I picked up some wheels for the drive. They always love that.

I need to post pix of my saplings; I think I'd intended to do that for awhile, but hadn't gotten around to it. So, here you go...

Clementine and its cousin fruit tree saplings. All of them have come out swinging for spring. They really started growing. I'll have to repot them later this year, is my guess. Part of me is tempted to bonsai these guys, but part is tempted to just let them grow unimpeded. It's still going to take a long time for them. This was all because I'd a particularly good clementine and hadn't wanted to consign the seeds of it to a landfill, by way of the garbage, and wanted to see if I could get any of the seeds to grow. Repeating it with a lemon and an orange, I think. I've had great success with it, and I'm enjoying watching the process continue. The boys are fascinated by it, too. Never really thought about whether I had a green thumb or not, but I guess I do.

KOFF

Still coming out from under the B1 Bug. My voice is all shot from all the coughing I'd been doing. But am gradually getting better.

Koff Koff Hack

I definitely caught B1's bug. The congestion just warehouses itself in the lungs, and you can't cough it out, but the irritation in there compels the coughing, despite taking meds. My voice has dropped about an octave from all the coughing I've done. Bleah.

Flu?

I think I'm catching B1's flu. There's a certain character to an influenza sore throat that is different from rhinovirus sore throats -- the way they present is different. And B1 definitely had the real flu -- it bugs me that one has to distinguish that -- flu (influenza) from "stomach flu" (aka, gastroenteritis, aka [most likely] norovirus), just because people get confused. Not the same diseases, people.

Anyway, I'm definitely coming down with something. We'll see whether it fully presents this weekend or what. I hope my body fights it off. We'll see. Absolutely everybody's been sneezing around work, and that's one of the key ways flu gets spread. *ACHOO*

Right now, it's sore throat, drainage, headache (I never get headaches), and zero appetite. No fever, yet, but we'll see if that creeps in -- B1 had a fever of 100.8, which isn't a super-bad fever, but it was bad enough to wear him down, for sure. It's easy to spot when he's got a fever, as his ears and cheeks flush red, and the general lassitude he shows. For me, it's usually a combination of actually getting the chills -- since I never get cold; and/or loss of appetite and libido (it's true -- my libido checks out when I get sick; that's a sure sign of me being on the mend, as my libido comes right back when I'm on the upswing).

Chicago's definitely back into classic March weather. That heat wave we had passed, and now it's back to the spring chill.

Oh, before I forget! This is super-cool! I told B1 about this, and he was intrigued. I'd already known about that, but it was nice to see some new stuff about it come out. I love the idea that there could be billions of habitable planets even just in our own galaxy. That's fabulous!

Supreme Fallacies

As ever, Paul Krugman gets it right...

Is requiring that people pay a tax that finances health coverage O.K., while requiring that they purchase insurance is unconstitutional? It’s hard to see why — and it’s not just those of us without legal training who find the distinction strange. Here’s what Charles Fried — who was Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general — said in a recent interview with The Washington Post: “I’ve never understood why regulating by making people go buy something is somehow more intrusive than regulating by making them pay taxes and then giving it to them.”

Indeed, conservatives used to like the idea of required purchases as an alternative to taxes, which is why the idea for the mandate originally came not from liberals but from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation. (By the way, another pet conservative project — private accounts to replace Social Security — relies on, yes, mandatory contributions from individuals.)
So has there been a real change in legal thinking here? Mr. Fried thinks that it’s just politics — and other discussions in the hearings strongly support that perception.

I was struck, in particular, by the argument over whether requiring that state governments participate in an expansion of Medicaid — an expansion, by the way, for which they would foot only a small fraction of the bill — constituted unacceptable “coercion.” One would have thought that this claim was self-evidently absurd. After all, states are free to opt out of Medicaid if they choose; Medicaid’s “coercive” power comes only from the fact that the federal government provides aid to states that are willing to follow the program’s guidelines. If you offer to give me a lot of money, but only if I perform certain tasks, is that servitude?

Yet several of the conservative justices seemed to defend the proposition that a federally funded expansion of a program in which states choose to participate because they receive federal aid represents an abuse of power, merely because states have become dependent on that aid. Justice Sonia Sotomayor seemed boggled by this claim: “We’re going to say to the federal government, the bigger the problem, the less your powers are. Because once you give that much money, you can’t structure the program the way you want.” And she was right: It’s a claim that makes no sense — not unless your goal is to kill health reform using any argument at hand.

Reactionary Ideology Trumps Science

This is an appalling study. Basically, it shows that among "conservatives" (I'd call them "reactionaries" in truth), there's been a 28-point drop in their trust in science since the mid-1970s. While liberals and moderates have maintained their same level of trust in science, conservatives went from 63% in around 1974, to around 35% today.

What that says to me is that ideology has eclipsed science within the ranks of conservatives. This is a disastrous turn for them, and reflects the triumph of Know-Nothingism among their ranks. Such a steep decline can't be attributed to the general dumbfuckery of their ranks, either; this is occurring at the elite end of the conservative spectrum, and that means the culprit must be ideology.

The secular religion of ideology has supplanted science among the ranks of conservatives. I've grimly joked that the Right is the American equivalent of the Taliban, but this is puts data behind that idea. It's like Galileo being forced to recant his ideas before the Pope, because they didn't mesh with Church doctrine. And this is where the GOP is? Lordy, it's embarrassing.

And what's more, these ideologues are actually framing public policy -- not based on actual science, but on fucking ideology? So, the rest of the country (and, by extension, the world) is forced to suffer the consequences of their hidebound ideology?

Science and empiricism are about as close to sacred as I get, honestly -- I respect them because they are data-driven, methodological, and they work. Ideology is creepy, it's the snake eating its own tail, and has, at its heart, only "Because I said so" as its justification. Pathetic. Horrific.

For a group to be so blinded by ideology that they turn their backs on something with such a proven track record of success as science? Holy shit. I'd be hugely embarrassed if I were a thinking conservative, honestly. This "brain drain" within their ranks is dreadful, and accounts for the absence of actual ideas from the supposed "Party of Ideas." Another few years of this ideological winnowing of reason and the idea of a "conservative intellectual" will be oxymoronic!

If reality doesn't fit their theories, they throw out reality. *golf applause* What this brain drain points to is that objective science wasn't buttressing their ideological views, so they have stopped trusting it, rather than changing or adapting their views to reflect extant reality. Insanity. Idiocy.

And for what? An ideology. The Way Thinks SHOULD Be(tm) is not the same as The Way Things Actually Are, conservatives! Reality is going to bite you on the ass, whether you acknowledge it or not. That's what's cool about science, why it will always (eventually) beat out ideology.  "Why? Because I said so, that's why." Sorry, but that doesn't pass the intellectual sniff test. You want to embarrass yourselves that way, that's fine; just don't inflict that kind of militant ignorance on the rest of society, please. And what's worse, don't expect the rest of us, those who haven't drunk the Kool-Aid, to go along with your bullshit.

Supremely Irritating

If the Supreme Court were capable of irony, they'd realize it's ironic in the extreme that these individuals, who themselves benefit from single-payer healthcare (like their peers in Congress), are all set to strike down Obama's tepid quasi-reform. Safely and effectively insured in the manner that the rest of the First World is insured, they can pontificate about healthcare knowing that their own coverage is assured. Marvelous, yes?

I'd love for somebody to actually call them out on this -- again, not that Obamacare is single payer; it's not, unfortunately -- but I guarantee the reactionary justices are all hostile to the idea of single-payer, even as they use it for their own health needs. Ever wonder why the justices tend to live a LONG TIME? Single-payer healthcare -- if their health was entrusted to the free market, they'd not live nearly so long. I mean, they're well-compensated for the work they do, so they could afford to pay for their own healthcare if they had to, but thanks to single-payer, they don't have to, and they enjoy robust health, without having to fear the price tag for it -- just like every citizen in the First World outside of America.

I also wish activists and protesters would call bullshit on Congress for that; the same guys who strenuously oppose healthcare reform as the very ones who enjoy exactly the same kind of healthcare they would deny the rest of the country. At least I'd like to see them refuse that socialistic single payer every Congressman enjoys and pay out of pocket for their healthcare -- or, at the very least, for these supposed representatives to have the same healthcare of their constituents, just to highlight the disparities and inequities of for-profit healthcare.

This issue's not going away; as the Baby Boomers slide ever closer to their mass grave on a banana peel, healthcare is going to loom ever larger. It remains one of the most common causes of personal bankruptcy. The civilized nations have all recognized this and gone the single-payer route, recognizing that safeguarding their people's health is a national security issue. Our country remains the stubborn outlier. Here, you get the care you can afford, and if you can't afford it, tough for you.

The insurance lobby is going to have to go down, one way or another, for reform to actually come about. It needs to be done. So, once Obama's weak-tea, pro-insurance industry, Romneycare-derived plan gets lit up by the Supremes, the problem will continue to loom, and, indeed, to grow ever larger.

(Health)Careless

Looks like the Supremes are gong to scuttle Obamacare, which should be a surprise to exactly no one. The problem I always had with Obamacare is that it was a false solution to an actual problem. The US is the lone outlier in the First World in that it doesn't have national healthcare. Indeed, many Second World and even some Third World nations are going to national healthcare, too. It gets at a fundamental aspect of healthcare: that good health, in a civilized society, is neither a commodity nor a privilege, but is a human right.

Obamacare, for all of the howling of the reactionaries, was a reform that was so business-friendly that Eisenhower's administration could have put it forward. It wasn't socialism, but was, instead, a sloppy kiss to the private insurance industry. And therein was the problem -- the individual mandate, which forces people to buy private health insurance, is, fundamentally, unconstitutional.

By trying to cater to the private insurance industry, Obama sowed the seeds of the ruin of Romneycare...err...Obamacare. Since he was going to encounter rabid, shrill hostility from the Right regardless of what he did, Obama should have been bold and gone for Medicare for All -- single-payer for all Americans. Medicare remains a popular program (even among the rank-and-file of the Right, who seem not to understand that Medicare is from the government when they protest "Keep the government out of my Medicare"). The Right's leadership wants to do away with Medicare, but their rank-and-file enjoy its benefits.

So, strategically, Obama should have made that his program, so the Right's leadership would have to be at odds with their own supporters' preferences as they tried to stop it. And it would have granted healthcare access to all Americans, would've reduced costs, ensured Medicare's solvency, and would have brought tangible benefit to millions. It would've been a bold move, a courageous one, and a just one. He needed to be bold, not timid, because the opposition was going to go after him regardless of what he'd offered.

Instead, Obama dusted off Romney's plan, put his name on it, and foisted that on Americans, hoping it wouldn't step on any of the power players' toes. The result is what we have right now, and it's looking like Obamacare is dead on arrival at the Roberts Supreme Court.

*golf applause*