Can't we all just get along?

C'mon, can't we? I mean, what've you guys got to be so pissed off about anyway? Wait, you're not still steamed over that bogus partisan impeachment, are you?

Simmer down, it's just politics. Everybody gets their hair mussed a bit in politics.

Are you talking about the nonstop hate-streaming apparatus that is talk radio? Heh. I bet you wish you thought of it first, or really, had a base that was dumb enough to fall for it. You gotta admit, it works pretty good.

And besides, we never really came out and said that Hillary's a man-hating lesbian castrating shrew bitchonwheels. We just implied it. Pretty clever when you think about it, eh? There are limits to what you can say, but you can imply any goddam thing at all.

* * * * *

OK, so seriously then. What is up with this media-mania surrounding the sudden need for bipartisanship? It's quite predictable, really. We've had a decade and a half of hyper-partisanship, most perfectly characterized by the lock-step voting of the Gooper contingent in both houses of congress, and created more or less exclusively by them. Period.

And now, that they may have a little less power than they're used to, they make a big stink about working together.

I call bullshit. More people need to wake up to the fact that the Goopers created this situation under Clinton (Nixon, really), magnified it 100-fold under Bush and accomplished precisely nothing with their six years of unlimited power. Nothing. Think about that. Not one single positive fucking thing, except an extra few weeks of daylight savings time. That's it.

The proper reward for this bacchanal of loathsome greed? Destruction. Demolition. Exclusion. Revulsion. Pariah status for a generation, at least.

You Goopers want bipartisanship now? Here's a deal. Give me four years of you shutting the fuck up and then we'll talk. OK?

Read Greenwald here for more, better.

Oh, and one more thing: Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton? No. Just no.

UPDATE to add this link. Another, better look at the idea.

What are we afraid of?

Seriously.

Is it that bad? Is it that tough? Certainly there's gotta be a lot tougher situations in the world than this, no?

Fear of failure's too easy, fear of success is probably a little too glib. It's something more subtle, I think.

It's potential that creates the biggest fear of all. Potential and along with it the distinct possibility that it will go forever unfulfilled.

So how to fight it? In the same way all fear is defeated. Perseverance, for one. Fly in its face. Do. Be. Write. Learn. Try to listen to everything but it.

Another way is simply to accept. Befriend. Relax.

(Yes, I right-clicked this image from some other place.
Stole it. Badger me, and I'll delete, happily.)

Eh? The Suburban Wilderness?

So what is The Suburban Wilderness? (Other than just a name for the place I live, of course.)

Good question. It is where I live after all, so it's kind of hard to seperate that out. Impossible, really.

Is it about making your yard as 'natural' as possible? Maybe a little.

Is it about being in between, on the border, interstitial? Getting warmer.

The Suburban Wilderness is a place in, and of, modern America. A place after the baby boom, but before other things. We lack the country's simplicity and the city's energy but we have our own tenacious form of vitality.

The place existed before George W. Bush's America, but these lost and bewildering Bush years represent a fruition, a fullness of the darkest and most corrupting influences of the American situation. And we struggle with them. It's easy to find your way around the Suburban Wilderness, but you can get very lost here.

But Bush is not all, of course. Mercifully: "There are other forces at work in the world." Life tries to be simpler in the Suburban Wilderness. We try to live close to work, and work where we live. We know all things -- including the modern GOP -- will pass, and we try to stay patient.

We're not fully without wisdom. We play good music and fun games, we eat spicy food, and drink cold beer.

We're thinking of getting chickens.