Erasing Time

Water flows under bridges, leaves fall off trees, I hork my database with no recent backups, life goes on. I’ll replace the past two months in the time-stream as quickly as I can, given that I’ve finally found a house to move into, they’ve started handing me actual responsibilities at work that make blogging under the spreadsheets a less enticing thought, and I’ve been infected with recall mania that requires a greatly stepped-up news reading schedule.

It’s funny. I hate the recall - it’s money bleeding through a weird loophole in California elections law, and all possible outcomes are ruinous. But there’s a sense of exuberance about it. The minor candidate profiles are full of people running to satisfy quirky, pop-post-modern democratic ideals: providing a common-man alternative to Your Favorite Political Evil, fixing California’s broken chi, getting increased exposure for the concerns of structural engineers, making self-referential documentaries about minor candidates in the California recall election. There are at least eight Ph.D. theses on political culture to be written, and enough human interest stories to fuel all the high school journalists in the state.

In my rational hours, I know we’re all just relieved to tell “What’ch’oo talkin’ ’bout?” political midget jokes, instead of “How many rocks can a one-armed Iraqi teenager fit in his pocket?” jokes. Other times, I think we’re moving from bitter angry isolated cynicism, to happy participatory cynicism, to some baseball games and apple pie or something.