Spring Steam Rolls NC

Yesterday the pollen was so bad I had to go to bed when I got home after driving eight miles with the window down--because the truck was too hot from sitting in the sun all day. Thus is the frog frozen in his perplexity, feet sizzling, blue flame licking the sides of his skillet.

This morning over at Digby I read the following, a remark so fundamentally obvious that to find it in a political blog mostly concerned with current events is something akin to time-travel--backwards:

Since members of virtually all species will have sex in any case, birth control allows women to plan their lives beyond their fecundity. It doesn't make sense to be educated, to travel to try out new jobs or start a business if your plans can be derailed at any moment by the very likely result of pregnancy and the raising of infants and small children. Women simply cannot have equal access to everything the world has to offer if they cannot control their reproduction.

Birth control doesn't just allow women to make more money, although it does. It allows them to make choices about their lives and fulfill their dreams. It allows them to be fully human. And that's really the problem isn't it?

The GOP has pushed the goal posts plumb out of the stadium. The problem with that is, goal posts in the street is kinda like that moment in "Blow Up" when the photog holds the broken bit of guitar out on the sidewalk after barely surviving his accidental accomplishment of winning it in the club after the Yard Birds have smashed it as the climax of their arrangement. Duchamps' bicycle leaning against a wall in Toulouse is merely a potential theft.

I theorized with a friend this weekend that the Chinese language jokes now appearing in various television commercials are an early harbinger of the coming decision by persons of responsibility in the world at large that the United States is no longer capable of controlling the insanely powerful arsenal of WMD it possesses. Such persons everywhere must be quaking at the current crop of GOP Presidential candidates. Democracy is in the end a means--it is the machinery by which we attempt to govern ourselves. It requires for its successful application the lubrication of competent education, and the encouragement of wisdom. Living in a hall of mirrors not only confuses, but teaches the mind to live in confusion.

Here close to home, NC leaders are pondering inviting fracking into our state.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zeza1xeWKM

Oh, yeah. I'm aware that the idea that some mysterious international persons of responsibility will come to save us is akin to Michael Rennie's turn as the Space Man. We're all in the same boat here, and down towards the stern a bunch of Randian fanatics have decided to build a fire to warm themselves up. The oars are pretty good for kindling, and the hull itself is made of wood. What could go wrong. There's water just on the other side to keep the burning wood from burning.