Been a while since I indulged myself and talked about American politics and such here on this blog, and I just happen to have come across a couple of pretty interesting political articles lately, so I figured, what the heck!

First, there is this fairly interesting article from The Week about why Ron Paul’s winning so many of these straw polls taken after GOP events despite being way behind on the national polls.

The article runs down the four main theories people are touting, which I shall summarize thusly :

1. He cheats. His supporters flood the straw polls, skewing the results.
2. The national polls are biased and meaningless. The mainstream media, included the conservative side of it, hates Ron Paul and is trying to keep him down, but the straw polls tell the real story.
3. He only wins when the real contenders aren’t there. The straw polls that Paul supporters tout as proof of their guy’s awesomeness are ones where people like Romney, Pawlenty, and Rick Perry decided to opt out.
4. Libertarianism is increasingly big in the GOP. Ron Paul has unimpeachable (so to speak) credits as a true dyed in the wool Libertarian, and the Libertarians are rapidly becoming the intellectual power to look out for in the GOP.

All these arguments have some validity, but even taken together, they fail to get the real picture. I think they show the media’s political myopia generated by their relentless reduction of everything into bullet points and sound bites.

For one thing, they completely ignore the actual person and his assets as a candidate, and Ron Paul has come considerable assets that give him more appeal than you would think.

For example, he is idealogically consistent. He is a Libertarian from toenails to eyebrows, his positions are consistent with one another in a way the Johnny-come-lately Tea Party fake Libertarians cannot compete with, and it gives him a solidity and an integrity that the highly artificial mainstream candidates, with their focus grouped “messaging” and media massaged “positions”, simply cannot compete with.

Relatedly, he truly believes everything he is saying. These are the same positions he has held for decades and he gives all indications of believing them with his whole being. This means that he is speaking from the heart, and politicians speaking from genuine conviction have always had an advantage in seeming both honest and visionary, which is especially important in this highly fake political age. A great deal of Barack Obama’s appeal has been his ability to convey conviction and not seem “like a politician”.

Unfortunately for him and his supporters, that’s where it ends. Being a true Libertarian, his policies are a bewildering mishmash of palatable populism, radical reforms of things most people have not even heard of (most people don’t even know what The Fed is, Doctor Paul), and things that strike most people as simply loonie. He is far too socially liberal for most Republicans (who despite the new fashion for Libertarianism, are still social conservatives at heart) and far too anti-government for most liberals. He has his cadre of supporters, and he could maybe double it if he was really lucky and really scored some points off the other GOP candidates off their platform vulnerabilities from his position, but that is it.

The other article I wanted to share was this rare and wonderful piece of glorious sanity from a writer at Time who talks about “How conservatives lost touch with reality”.

From what I can tell from the article, the author is a moderate conservative who, like me, pines for an era when conservatives were the practical, realistic, pragmatic, sober adults who acted out of genuine knowledge of the world and never spoke in the sort of ideological garblefarb completely without intellectual integrity that marked the rise of leaders like Mao and Castro.

Such people are simply not to be found any more. The Baby Boom generation simply did not produce any. That is how the political madness that is a world where it’s the conservatives want to tear down the system and are shouting Anarchy! and the liberals who are the guardians at the gate, keeping the Revolution mobs from burning down the grainhouse, has come to pass.

I feel strongly that in another era, I would have been a moderate conservative. In a previous era, they would have seemed like the voice of sanity versus the idealistic but impractical liberals.

But there is no voice of sanity in modern politics. Only lunatics and cowards.

And that’s how someone like Ron Paul can start looking good to people.

I had like a million different ideas for something more interesting to write about that just whatever random shit I have kicking about in my web browser, but I neglected to write them down, and they were consequently blown out of my brain when my hay fever kicked in with a vengeance today and made me sneeze so hard that I, for real, saw stars.

So hello there Summer. I know you don’t officially start for another 16 hours or so, but apparently you decided to send a huge whack of allergens my way as tiny demonic heralds, just to remind me of how complicated my relationship to you has become over the years.

Basically, I like the summer, but it does not not like me back at all. It’s a highly abusive relationship, really.

I have a number of factors that make summer a trial for me. First off would be the aforementioned hay fever. It has varied in intensity over the years, and for the most part it has gotten weaker over the years that have passed since that one terrible year, when I was in grade 11, where my hay fever become so severe that I would start sneezing in the middle of a sneeze.

That shit shouldn’t even be possible.

But it happened. Instead of “a-choo!” I was sneezing “a-CHRK-ah-ah-ah-CHK-CHT-CHRK” and so on. And it didn’t even have the courtesy to wait until summer proper so that I would at least be out of school and able to doctor myself properly. Oh no. It attacked in late May, not long after my birthday on the 19th, and had me as its bitch from then till after the end of school for the year.

So I don’t know how many times I had these massive sneezing fits where it sounded like I was gonna die on the spot when my whole reddened face popped like a massive, angry zit. So not only was I in histamine horror hell, but I was acutely embarrassed by suddenly becoming the highly unflattering center of attention in my high school classes.

A number of times I had to leave class because class could honestly not continue with me sneezing my head in half so loudly that it caused other nearby classes to come to an abrupt halt.

Fun bonus fact, it’s very hard to negotiate the relatively short distance between your classroom and the boy’s bathroom when your eyes are half swollen shut and awash in tears (another part of the response) and you are seeing spots in front of your eyes from how hard you are sneezing.

Thank goodness, it’s never been nearly that bad again. If I had to go through that every year, it would have driven me right round.

Since then, it’s faded over the years. That, combined with getting into a position where I could get enough antihistamines to last me through the worst of it, has made it way less of a problem than it was that terrible month or so way back when.

The other major factor that makes summer so hard for me is the heat. Heat is bad for all fat people. You see, the heat generated by the human body goes up as a cube function as mass goes up. Every cell of your body generates a certain amount of heat simply as part of its metabolism. That is what it means to be a warm blooded animal. We are self-heating.

The problem is that we get rid of excess heat by radiating it into the world via our skin, and that is a function of how much surface area for skin our bodies have, and that only goes up via a square function as your mass increases.

In other words, you don’t get more skin at the same rate as you get more heat-producing volume.

So the fatter, the hotter. That’s why us fat people are sweaty. Our bodies are frantically trying to get rid of all that heat and just can’t keep up.

But I have another factor that makes heat bad for me : an inherited predilection towards heatstroke. My Dad has it, and so do I. So heat does not just make me feel too hot, it makes me physically ill. Headache, ringing in my ears, nausea, dizziness, sometimes confusion.

I can usually keep it in check by aggressive hydration, but it’s still always there.

So summer is a difficult time for me because of my health.

And yet, I still love it. Sunshine and blue skies always make me feel good, even when I am only seeing them out of my bedroom window while I type. I love the more relaxed attitudes during the summer, and the move to the beaches (I love beaches!), and of course, ever since childhood, summer has meant fun.

And even though I have been unable to participate in much of that in recent years (something I plan to try to try to change, by golly), I still love the summer.

I guess it’s true… when you love something, you love it forever, even when it’s not even smart to do so any more. I love the summer, even though it hasn’t loved me back in a long time.

Maybe I can change that.

Hello. My name is Michael John Bertrand, and I am an introvert.

{SFX : Crowd saying “Hi, Michael!”}

I am not at all sure why that is a confession. I have certainly never consciously thought of myself as anything else, as far as I can tell. If you had asked me at any point in my adult life “Are you an extrovert?” I would have said “No”, or more recently, “No, but I am somewhat more extroverted than some introverts”.

I even accepted the I in INTJ (my Myers-Briggs personality type) without the slightest question or hesitation, and that I stands for Introverted, no ifs, and, or buts.

I have been shy and dreamy my entire life. I have always been very sensitive and bookish, and not terribly driven to explore the world when I could just stay home and read in comfort and safety.

And as if there could be any doubt left, I am currently semi-housebound from the deep effects of social anxiety disorder, which could easily be described as introversion to the point of pathology.

So why does simply saying “I am an introvert” make me feel like I am confessing a terrible, shameful secret, one that I should never confess to anyone, ever? Why do I feel so vulnerable and exposed when I say I am an introvert? What has this artificial space between what I know to be true and what I admit to myself and to others been protecting me from?

Because obviously, part of me is just not prepared to wear that label. As I type this, I feel an intense resistance to this entire process, and it is this resistance which fascinates me, and which suggests to me that there is something worth exploring in this unexpected cognitive gap.

So why the resistance? Certainly, in some circles, there is a stigma attached to introverts. We are seen as aloof, anti-social, unfriendly, and worst of all, broken. Defective. The assumed normal level of sociability and gregariousness of society is placed quite above what introverts feel comfortable with, and hence throughout our lives, we are made to feel like there is something wrong with us.

So that certainly must be part of it. As much as us smarty pants intellectual types like to occasionally think we live in self-made towers of independence, apart from and above the influence of the madding herd, the truth is that we are as much a product of our culture and the value messages we all absorb from our social milieu as naturally as a fish takes a drink of water, and so I have likely absorbed all kinds of messages about how weird, unfriendly, and just wrong I am for not being like the other kids.

But I think it goes a lot deeper than that with me. I think it cuts all the way to the bone, and I think I am beginning to understand why, and how.

I think that deep down, I feel like I cannot afford to be anything less that completely friendly and easy to get along with and affable and sociable, because in my mind, I am a horrible person who does not deserve to have anyone get close to him, and therefore I have to try as hard as I can to charm and beguile and entertain and impress people, because almost nobody pays any attention to me anyhow, so I have to be ready at all times to make the most of any opportunity to get the attention I crave so badly. If I dance fast enough, maybe I can get people to pay attention to me for a little bit longer.

Faced with a vast and aching need for attention like that, it’s no wonder that I don’t feel like I can afford to be choosy, to have limits, to put barriers between myself and others, to give myself full permission to be grumpy or out of sorts or simply not feeling sociable sometimes.

The reality is, I am not all that friendly a guy. I am an introvert, not the life of the party. I like small groups of close friends over large groups of shallow friends. I shun the bright, loud, hot, busy places and prefer the shady, quiet, cool, calm places, both in the world and in the world of the mind.

And there is nothing wrong with not really wanting to associate with a lot of people. Most people, if you really look at it, only really get along with a narrowly defined band of the larger population. Why should I feel bad for not being any different?

I can still think of myself as a friendly and likable guy without surrendering my right to pick and choose how and why I associate with people.

I give myself permission.

I made a Brony (that’s a male My Little Pony). Isn’t he cute?

I want one!

The glasses totally make the whole thing work. Sorry for the inexpert cropping, it’s hard to crop things evenly when you have wonky vision like me.

I overcame my usual tendency to pick eye-gouging color schemes by just sliding the color sliders around randomly and stopping at the first one that looked good to me.

I think he’s completely adorable, and I think I will name him Chris. Or Steven. Or maybe Lyle… oh, I don’t know. He’s just too cute to name!

Anyone have any ideas?

Oh, and I used this here program to make him. (Other stuff on that site is extremely naughty, so I wouldn’t click around too much unless you are a total pervert like me. )

I just love the modern era of image generators. I could never draw Steven (he looks like one, doesn’t he? kinda?) but with that awesome Flash program, I can still create him.

That is just so damn cool!

In my mind, he’s a real smooth charmer with a melodious deep voice and loads of charisma, but an unfortunate tendency to talk himself into trouble that he then has to talk himself out of, often with the reluctant help of his long-suffering friends.

Picture his best friend staring at him slackjawed and aghast, with a thought bubble reading “WHAT DID HE JUST SAY?” above his head while Steven (I guess that’s his name now) smooth talks some pretty pony, as represented by a speech bubble with a musical staff on it, but all the notes have things like candy, kittens, rainbows, and so on for the “dots”.

Steven has a good heart, and sincerely never intends to cause trouble or get in over his head. He just has a tendency to fall in love with the sound of his own voice (usually, at the same time his audience does) and just let the golden words flow without stopping to think about what he is saying until it’s too late.

And his friends complain, but they put up with him because he’s a really good guy and, though they’d never admit it to anyone, they kind of enjoy the adventures he inadvertently drags them into.

He sounds like fun, doesn’t he?

Here’s some fun stuff vaguely related to the worlds of movies and video.

First, I just have to comment on the reaction to this particular movie trailer :

People are oohing and aahing over the thing, saying “it’s a movie trailer that’s like an entire movie about life” and saying how wonderful it is, and how they can’t wait to see the movie, and so on.

I mean, the New York Times reviewer quoted said “it reinvents the very act of perception”.

Well pardon my cynicism, but what the fuck have you people been smoking, and are you sure you are lighting the right end?

To me, admittedly judging purely from this miracle trailer, it seems like a rather thin and pretentious meal. Perhaps I am less impressed by philosophical poetry than the average critic, or I lack their deep and weary cynicism borne from watching so many bad movies that makes them vulnerable to sprouting into verdant bloom at the first movie that comes along that treats them like a grownup, but I cannot help but wonder how much of their impression is the material and how much of it is the admittedly very cool old Italian man doing the voiceover. (Presumably the auteur, but you can never be too careful about that. )

Maybe if I saw the whole movie, I too would be blown away. I am certainly open to beautiful poetry and a fresh, new, warmer approach to film. I am a big fan of movies like Shortbus and Hamlet II that embrace a new warmth, gentleness, and sincerity.

But come on, movie critics. Could you be a little less obvious in your train response to anything that seems impressive and European? Wipe the drool off your chin and try to seem objective.

Moving right along, here’s another form of film criticism : the damning clip compilation.

“You Just Don’t Get It, Do You?” – A Montage of Cinema’s Worst Writing Cliche from Jeff Smith on Vimeo.

Some lines do get used too much, Jeff Smith on Vimeo, and I consider it a perfectly valid point to put together clips of over used lines as a way to draw attention to the crime and hopefully put a little pressure on the system to avoid it.

But come on, Jeff Smith from Vimeo…. “You just don’t get it, do you?” as “the worst movie cliche of all time”? The worst? Seriously? You honestly think that is the worst one?

It doesn’t even make the top ten!

And some things are cliches in movies because they are cliches in the real life, and they are cliches in the real wold because they are phrases that work. They express a genuine sentiment in a fluid and succinct way, and hence they enter the language and stay.

In fact, honestly, the whole paranoia about cliches has lead to a lot of stilted, unnatural, and just plain ugly writing as diligent followers of the rule constantly try to reinvent the wheel, or as they might say, “once more conceive of a rolling vertical solid circle as a means of locomotion. ”

Admittedly, this particular phrase, “you just don’t get it, do you?” has been quite rightly identified as one of the most hostile and alienating things you can say to a person. There is good reason to regard it as being like “shut up” : a phrase you do not use casually because its potential rudeness and insensitivity makes it rather like dynamite, and hence, only to be us in exremis.

In fact, “you just don’t get it, do you?” is a lot worse than “shut up”.

But still, people do say it, and sometimes it’s even entirely justified, and so to label it as one of the worst movie cliches of all time, let alone the very worst?

Please. Give me a break, Jeff Smith of Vimeo.

And finally, completing today’s tryptic, we have this bit of film par excellence, a dramatic reading of a highly important passage ripped straight from the headlines of today and sure to take its place amongst the most august and respect works of history as it happens.

It’s also NSFW as all hell. or at least the audio is, so listen with caution!

Plus it has Jane Lynch, who has the magical powers of awesomeness, and Bill Maher, who I think was famous back in the 90’s for something maybe.

I kid, I kid, I still like Bill Maher and him losing his job over daring to suggest that maybe the USA had done something to provoke the events of 9/11 was a tragedy and a farce and a crime.

I was a huge fan of Politically Correct back when it was on. It was the only show I can recall of in recent history where you could get actual intelligent debate on issues, you know, back when the sides actually engaged one another.

And I am glad Maher is still out there doing his best to provoke.

But seriously, who watches that show?

You know that well worn old saying “some days are diamonds, and some days are worm-eaten explosive musk ox turds with AIDS”?

Today ain’t been a diamond.

Mostly, it has been the usual business when, for whatever reason, the universe dumps a whole twelve gallon bucket of the Sandman’s magic dust into my brain all at once, and I spend the whole day either asleep or blearily stumbling about, barely able to feed myself and empty my bladder before Morpheus reclaims me.

Today was so bad, it melted my fragile reality circuit entirely. At various moments of “consciousness” today, I have forgotten what day of the week it was, what season it was, whether or not I had done various tasks, what meal it was I was having, and even how to do a crossword puzzle properly.

I don’t think I forgot my own name, but then again, nobody asked.

It really highlights something I have been musing about lately, which is just how chaotic my life is, in a subjective sense. I never know what sort of bizarre mind altering chemical chaos this strange organic stewpot of a brain of mine will cook up next. My feeling of connectedness to reality, my ability to concentrate and focus, my state of wakefulness, my emotional polarity (positive or negative, expanding or contracting, outward or inward), my feeling of physical comfort and ease…. all of these vary wildly and unpredictably from moment to moment. Outwardly, very little happens in my life.

But on the inside, it’s a tornado ripping through a line of very full port-a-potties in here.

And I think these two things might be related. I suspect that the radical unbalance between my outer and inner lives might be either a major or THE major cause of this internal chaos. I get so little input from the outside world, and do so much to isolate myself from it and hence leave myself almost entirely at the mercy of my inner life, that I think my mind and my body generate a great deal of internal chaos just as a way to balance the equation.

It’s like a minor subset of the much larger phenomenon of sensory deprivation. In sensory deprivation, the subject’s senses are completely blocked in what is known as an isolation tank. The person in the tank can’t hear, see, smell, taste, feel, or otherwise sense anything.

Deprived of all input, the person rapidly begins to hallucinate quite vividly as their brains generate false input in order to try to compensate for the sudden deficit. They enter a total “waking dream” state, and unsurprisingly, lose all contact with reality.

As a result, isolation tanks and the experiments using them are considered ethically extremely dodgy to put it mildly. The risk to the person’s sanity is extremely high. Living beings are simply not designed to handle such catastrophically low input levels.

In my case, of course, my senses are functioning just fine. They do not literally get low levels of input. My eyes stay open, I can hear, I can smell, I can touch, I can taste.

But the longer one is exposed to the same stimuli, the more one’s senses screen out said stimuli, so in effect, it is as though, from a perceptual basis, said stimuli is not really there any more.

Now apply that to someone who spends most of their life in the same few rooms, in which very little changes from moment to moment, day after day.

This describes both the lives of a person in a high security prison…. and a person like me, with crippling depression that keeps them home most of the time.

It is not the kind of radical brain scrambling psychedelic experience as sensory deprivation, but it is, I think, a milder but chronic version of the larger and more acute phenomenon.

And the unpleasant equation, the deadly Catch-22 of it all, is that it is the depression which drives an introverted person like myself to isolate myself, and then said isolation makes the polluted inner life all the more brutal and chaotic, and hence makes the depression worse, leading to further isolation.

Thus, the disease reinforces itself, potentially infinitely, with the victim living in a ever tinier box of their own creating. And all because of a faulty survival instinct that says, basically, “hide and be still until the big bad monster goes away”.

And that just plain does not work when the monster is a pain deep down inside you.