JBot Mania

I believe in the judicious use of profanity in rock music. Profanity does have its place in language and I find it only offenisive when it is overused. A good “fuck” or “shit” well placed within a song does not offend me, but rather brings a smile to my face. It feels good to swear. But not too often, or like with all good things, it loses much of its power. A good example, by Ben Folds Five, is “Army”– “I thought about the army; Dad said ‘Son you’re fucking high.’”

I believe in the right for anyone, of age, to marry anyone else, of age. I am still confounded by people who feel the need to “defend” marriages and who are horrified by the desire of gay indivduals to marry. It makes me wonder what’s going on at home with these people. Last time I checked, marriage was between two people, not two people and a larger group of people who give it value. Marriage should get its value from the actual people in it. Why should the marriage of two people have any effect on the validity and value of someone else’s marriage? That’s what I think the problem is. It isn’t about what the Bible says, how the Bible defines it. The problem is that when just anyone can get married, what does the whole process really mean? It doesn’t mean a goddamn thing. It never did. Marriage is a collective idea wherein two people say that they are committed to each other and people decide to respect that. No one HAS to respect that–not even the two people getting married. They just choose to.

I find this whole idea reminiscent of fraternities. The only importance a fraternity has is the importance it gives itself. The single most important method for giving membership in a fraternity any importance at all, is by creating some means of excluding others, of singling people out as better or more deserving of this ‘honor’. Is that what we are creating here– a marriage fraternity? What kind of people need a fraternity? I’ll tell you–people who can’t garner the respect they desire on their own, so they attempt to force it out of people by giving themselves an imagined importance. If your marriage is so pristine, such a model of what marriage should be, you shouldn’t have to “defend” it. It should stand above all else based on its own merits. But if you need to hide behind a definition in some aribtrary book and then force that definition upon others, you, my friend, are the real loser.

I believe in the futility of trying to ‘beat’ traffic. You will never ‘beat’ traffic. You may escape for moments here and there but traffic will always get the best of you in the end. The best of you, that is, if your goal is to win. If you can accept it for what it is, create a schedule for yourself that provides you enough reward for getting in the car at all (say, a cookie and tea) you can achieve a stalemate. That’s about as good as it gets folks. And I suppose as a semi-liberal, that makes me a quitter by playing nice but really, I’m just not wasting my time and energy orchestrating my life around one obstacle.