Asparagus pee, Gooblek & Other Neat stuff

I really am going to try to rally behind Mr. Bush, but I think, perhaps, the best thing I read today was, and I’m paraphrasing as well as stealing because I’m too lazy to go back and look it up, “He’s not just misunderestimated, now he’s unredefeated.”

I was watching Fear Factor&#153 awhile ago, and I think I have just come up with an idea for the best “reality” show ever. It’s called I Will if You Will, and here’s how it works:

The host, like Jeff Probst from Survivor&#153 or Joe Rogan from Fear Factor&#153, asks a bunch of people to do really stupid stuff, like eating bugs or walking on glass or going to Iraq, and the rule is that at any point during a single episode, the group can confer and any contestant can say the magic words, “Hey, Jeff, I will if you will,” and the host has to do it or they all win.

It gets better.

See, the players can only pull their trump card out once, so they have to decide at each point whether it’s better to eat the bug and wait for something really bad, like walking a tightrope between two buildings, and the host has to be prepared to do this week after week. The other rule that’s absolutely necessary is that the producers file a script with some accounting firm like Earnst & Young that describes each stunt request in detail, and they can’t deviate from the script, or everybody wins.

This is, of course, an un-thinly-veiled, not-so-carefully-caged metaphor for being The President, but it’s also a reaction to listening to Joe just now telling someone walking on a bed of glass, “Oh! Dude! Don’t twist your foot! You’re gonna cut yourself, man,” and it’s also a really good idea for a reality show that you are welcome to steal freely.

See, I don’t have the resources to make it happen, but I’d love to watch it, and that’s how ideas are supposed to work.

“Existential Angst” has become such a clich&eacute that I’m forced to put it in quotes, but it sure describes how I’ve felt today.

One of the bad things about being relatively smart is that your vocabulary is too big to let yourself just have “the blahs,” so you spend the day wallowing in a swirling dung-heap of German, French, and Latinate roots and spouting psycho-babble and imagining you’ve developed acute anhedonia.

I’ve read a number of M. Scott Peck’s books, and since I’ve forgotten more than most people ever know, I remember very little, but two things stuck with me:

The first is that he opens The Road Less Travelled with the simple statement, “Life is hard.”

The second is that he described something called cathexis that I really identify with, pun intended. See, cathexis is the investment of psychological energy into ideas, objects, groups, and people. In simplistic terms, if something has sentimental value to you, then you cathect it. I just think of it as caring about something, the way I actually “love” my old ’89 Honda Accord, or worry about my aquarium or my vegetable garden &#150 it’s crazy! I mean, why should I care about whether other people appreciate Elliott Smith (a lot), if I don’t care about who won the last Superbowl (at all)? Here is why: I love Elliott Smith’s music, and I’ve come to identify myself with it, and taken it into myself, and I want you to love me, so you have to love Elliott too. And because I was a scrawny brainiac, football is anathema to me. (I told you this stuff was crazy.)

Here’s another way to look at it. Cathexis is kind of like the opposite of catharsis. Catharsis is how you get things out, like screaming into a pillow or kicking the dog. Cathexis is how you invite things in, and I’m a cathexis junkie.

Unfortunately, cathecting things takes time. It’s a lot faster and easier not to do something than to do it. It’s easier to have a weed patch than a garden. It’s easier to not have an aquarium than to have one. Life is hard, you don’t get something for nothing, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and you really have to try, but no less a man than Homer J. Simpson said it best when he told his kids, “Trying is the first step towards failure.”

So I’m planning to take some time to rethink what I’ve chosen to identify with and care about and try.

And with that, dear reader, I believe my catharsis is complete.

According to this article over on Excite News, John Hall, the guy from Orleans who wrote the 70’s hit Still the One has asked George Bush to stop using it.

In completely unrelated intellectual property news, I read this morning in Publishers Weekly that DC Comics is suing the Kryptonite bike lock company for infringement.

What’s an idea worth? Can’t you just make more? I guess I’d feel different if Dubya was playing one of my songs, or I’d gotten to name the Superman stuff.

I have decided that the new posthumous Elliott Smith CD is so good and so important that I’d like to give a few people a free copy to help spread the word. I will provide up to 5 copies before I cut it off. It’s not first come, first served, it’s completely at my own arbitrary discretion, and here’s how it’s going to work:

Send me something that proves to my satisfaction that you are a songwriter. E-mail me an MP3 sample, send me a link to your website, or send me a tape or CD, and if I’m satisfied that you are seriously trying to make good sounds come out of something, I will ask Amazon.com to ship you a copy of From a Basement on the Hill absolutely free.

You also have to promise me that you will listen carefully to tracks 3 and 7.

My brother Kevin is ineligible because I’m getting him one for Christmas anyway, so the cat’s out of Santa’s bag on that one.

I’ve long been a firm believer that we should truly strive for “one man (sic), one vote,” but maybe this whole electoral college thing actually makes sense somehow, kinda like a good judge telling a bad jury that their verdict to hang the guy just doesn’t fly.

In our local paper this morning, there was a reply to a previous letter saying, “I can’t believe what’s-her-name says she won’t vote for Kerry because his wife told someone to ‘shove it,’ when we all know that Cheney told a US senator to ‘****’ himself, and Bush himself called a reporter an ‘a******.'”

Excuse me??? H-e-l-l-o-o-o, is this thing on? Is that your brain on drugs? What’s the matter with you people?

If you’re choosing my next president based solely on whether or not they said a word that you have to spell in asterisks, we don’t need for you to vote.

No, really. I’m serious.

Even some of my favorite commentators are getting sucked into these distractions. I mean, Doonesbury this week is focusing on the bulge in Bush’s jacket? Even Kerry is disappointing me by focusing all of his rhetoric on the missing 380 tons of high-power explosives. If 380 tons can suddenly turn up missing, just imagine how many other tons there must be!

But let’s focus for a moment on the real issues. What about:

• Foreign Policy?
• Domestic Policy?
• Human Rights?
• The Economy?
• Health Care?
• Social Services?

Grow the **** up.

I have posted the first example of running a tough question through the ethical presuppositions that I worked up last week: On Abortion.

I was putting together a “Top Ten Reasons I Won’t Be Voting for Bush” list, but The Nation has a great list they’ve compiled called 100 Facts and 1 Opinion, so I’m going to refer you there, but I’ll share my #1 reason: he didn’t win before!

MoveOn PAC has set up a form to volunteer to call voters in the swing states over the weekend. I’m not sure I can do this – I’m already calling people for our local Measure V three nights a week, so I’m about phoned out, but check it out!

I stayed up way too late last night working on writing up a new system of ethics. Yup. That’s right, I’m writin’ my own code of ethics. Click here to read Chapter 1.

(This is actually less than half of what I’ve written, but the rest isn’t ready for public consumption.)