Houston

I was in Texas for a conference last weekend, and they made sure we couldn't forget it.

LASIK recovery update

Lasik recovery is going quite well from a medical standpoint. I've had very little discomfort, although I've been quite tired. No doubt healing eyeballs is work, but also I've had mild cramps all week and my allergies are kicking in, so it's hard to know exactly how to apportion blame.

From an amusement standpoint, it's a totally different outlook. The day after surgery, I had a meeting, a work lunch, and commencement, which was all I could handle, even with an aggressive nap in there. The next day was better, but I quickly ran up against the limits of my amusement. Reading for any extended period was out, as was television. A two-mile walk left me tired - again, allergies or eyes, it was a toss-up, but I certainly don't want to harass my eyes with pollen.

J is out of commission with some crud, so there was no one to entertain me on command. I tried a recorded short story but couldn't concentrate on it. Having listened to books on tape before, maybe it was just the narrator. I tried several podcasts, which are not a Thing I Do, and now I know why - mostly I was frustrated at listening to something I could read in a third of the time. I finally found one I like, the Bowery Boys. It's tightly written, without all the chatter of morning radio show hosts.

It turned out there were a couple of things I could do, though. One, cleaning. My apartment was already pretty clean, but now I've cleaned things you didn't even know could be cleaned. (No worries, no nasty chemicals or kicking up dust allowed.) Two, I could cook. I finally made a sourdough that worked - kind of a cheater, though, since it also used yeast.

I have taken a few walks, although nothing strenuous. The photos at top and bottom are from Riverside Park.

Laser eyes!

This week, I am having LASIK surgery. It requires that I wear my glasses for two weeks prior, which is a good reminder of just how annoying they are. They get dirty, my peripheral vision is shot, they slide down my nose, I can't wear sunglasses, and it's hard to be active. Contacts, of course, are a vast improvement, but they don't work in all situations - it was much easier to do the Long Trail without worrying about contact hygiene.

The doctor tells me my vision should be pretty good the next morning. However, my eyes will be healing, so I'll need to avoid/reduce some activities for a week. Specifically:

• No swimming
• No eye makeup
• No "dusty, dirty environments"
• No TV
• No long bouts of reading
• No driving
• No going to the gym

The day immediately after is commencement, so I do have to work, but luckily that mostly involves sitting there. But then it's a four-day weekend, and I can't hike, can't read, can't binge-watch Netflix ... what, exactly, am I supposed to do?

Woes

My body has been falling apart the past few weeks. That is, my shoulder has been moderately sore, and in a HIIT class I tweaked my IT band, and then I got a cold. All in all, I felt quite useless for over a week. My cold has since cleared up, although I am now playing catch-up due to lowered productivity. 

Neither my shoulder nor my knee are really preventing me from doing anything, but they're both frustrating. Every time I feel like I'm back in good shape, it seems like an injury comes along. 

Decluttering

My ongoing quest to improve my life has been, of late, focused on paring things down. Paring down my debt, of course, but also objects, unhelpful relationships, and dumb ideas.

It’s surprising how much stuff I own but I don’t need, even living in a small studio apartment. I’ve started looking at things and deciding if I haven’t used them in years, I’m probably not going to, and out they go. Exceptions can be made for items of sentimental value, but that anthology I haven’t looked at in 15 years? Gone. The martini glasses that ended up in my possession after the bacon party five years ago? Gone.

(I realize that you are supposed to be alarmed when people start giving away their possessions, because maybe they are suicidal or something, but trust me - I’m getting rid of cheap glassware, not heirlooms.)

I’ve stopped putting energy into friendships where most of the effort is on my side, not that I had a lot of them. I’ve dumped Facebook friends who post nasty rants. Now, I don’t want to live in a liberal echo chamber, at least not most days, and I do have friends with differing political views. For example, among my Facebook friends are two college classmates, one a professional libertarian (I mean that in the most literal sense) and the other a conservative Catholic. Do we disagree on a lot? Yes. Does that include not only fiscal policy but also highly charged issues? Yes. I’m sure the Catholic and I would agree that abortion is a human rights issue - we’d just disagree about whose rights are at stake. That said, I respect that their arguments are internally consistent and expressed in a polite and respectful way. I just don’t have the energy to deal with people whose posts read like a Dr. Bronner’s bottle.

As far as ideas, that’s a little harder. They cling, persistently. One recent realization is that I tend to hold on to mediocre things in my life too long. Things that are bad? Gone. But things that are just okay - jobs, relationships - I tend to stick with and not aggressively pursue alternatives. I mean, if my soulmate (which I don’t believe in) came along but I had to move to Greenland to be with him … you know, I am pretty sure my landlord would let me break my lease. Not that I want to, but my landlord could fill this place easily enough; I wouldn’t be on the hook for over a year of rent. But I think of my lease as an absolute obstacle. It really isn’t, not in the way that, say, having a liver transplant next week would be.

(I am not having a liver transplant.)

So that’s where I’m at: Getting rid of stuff, and saving money. I have several financial goals, but the next major one I'm likely to achieve is finally having a $0 net worth. Not impressive, maybe, except that I have a negative net worth now. I'm looking forward to my assets outweighing my debts.

Just monetary assets, mind. No useless martini glasses here.

2014 in photos

January:


February:


March:


April:


May:


June:


July:


August:


September:


October:


November:


December:

Not-so-obvious lessons I’ve learned about relationships from my past relationships

Some days I’m not sure I am learning anything, because I make the same damn mistakes over and over. Other days, I think maybe I have, even if the lessons are basic stuff. Like: Don’t date someone in the middle of a divorce. Did I really need to learn that the hard way?

These are the less obvious things I’ve learned. They may not apply to people dating for the first time - we all had to learn to be good kissers - but they do apply to both men and women. Except maybe #3.

1. Your relationship(s) will not look like the models you grew up on. Whether it was Disney or your parents’ relationship or When Harry Met Sally, don’t try to reproduce it. You aren’t them (and, face it, none of us are Disney princesses), and times change, and stories always sound better after the fact.
   
2. Most people are living the life they want. Unless they’re involved in actively trying to change it, don’t assume they ever will. Think hard about whether you can really share that life.
   
3. Never date a man who calls you “pretty.” If they don’t think you’re “beautiful,” they think they’re settling.
   
4. If the sexytimes are boring now, they’re not going to get better.
   
5. Don’t date anyone with active mental health issues. I’m not saying you should never date someone who struggles with, say, depression. But if they’re in the middle of a very active battle with it, they aren’t in a good position to be starting a new relationship.
   
6. If they aren’t willing to tell their parents about you, run like hell. (Exceptions can be made if they had an insane childhood and have cut off all contact with their parents. I haven’t experienced that one, but I imagine it comes with other challenges.)
   
7. If you think you can do better, go out there and try. You’ll either find your inflated ego being knocked back down to a more realistic size, or you’ll discover that you have been selling yourself short all along.
   
8. There is no value to nurturing a long-term crush. Either make your move or move on.
   
9. If someone truly loves you, they’ll find a way to tell you. It may not be with those words, but they’ll make it clear.
10. There are certain events in your life your partner has an obligation to be there for, such as funerals, illnesses, and getting out of prison. If they aren't there for you in those times, you're better off without them, because you are already doing the hard stuff without them.

Against hustling

Not all that long ago, one could be successful in many fields of endeavor with nothing more than enough education, a minimum of talent, and lots of hard work. (Is that all, you say!) In some fields, of course, this was never enough; to be a best-selling novelist or NFL quarterback also required luck and possibly more than a minimum of talent. Other fields required hustle - a constant sales pitch to the world around you. Sales jobs, of course, meant hustling, but so did any kind of contract or freelance work.

Today, in our new downsized, casualized, contract-based, unpaid internship-heavy workforce, hustle is the new norm. Everyone is supposed to be an entrepreneur, constantly on the make for opportunities.

It’s one thing to keep one’s resume up-to-date, of course, or to attend the occasional continuing ed class. But hustle goes farther than that. We are all brands. We all have platforms. We network. We’re looking for the next opportunity as soon as we secure this one. We are devoted to our “dream” full-time, and if we aren’t we don’t deserve it. (No one can have more than one dream, in this mindset.) And this full-time marketing of ourselves is making me tired just thinking about it.

For one thing, it’s work, and for some people it’s more work than others. It’s like requiring everyone to be an extrovert, or insisting we all deliver excellent customer service. Only some of us thrive under those conditions.

For another, it’s unrelated to how good we actually are at the job itself, at least for most jobs. Is someone a better accountant because of their Twitter feed? No.

Finally, and most importantly, it’s taking time away from the jobs we’re actually trying to do. Every minute spent selling myself is a minute not spent doing my actual work. The thing that long-term employment (or tenure) gives us is the freedom to think about things, to produce lasting, significant ideas and things, to make decisions upon conviction and evidence, not fear that we’ll be unemployed next week. Places of discovery like Bell Labs are being replaced by ever-changing grant-money gigs with no room for serendipity.

Hustle is everywhere, in coding and in design and in marketing and in entertainment, but I see it up close in academia. Hustle is necessary in the adjunct system. Unless you’re an adjunct teaching a class on the side from your main job - as I am; they could fire me and I’d be fine - every semester is a whole new gig, or series of gigs, and you need each and every one of them to make rent. There is no room for experimentation or error. For those lucky enough to be on the tenure-track, the ratcheting up of publication expectations means exhausted assistant professors looking for easy-to-mine data sets, Least Publishable Units, and not a lot of room to think about big ideas.

Our students are hustling, too. Trying to be full-time students with an unpaid internship and a job that pays the bills, just so at graduation they can get an entry-level job that two decades ago they could have gotten with an associate’s and no experience is wearing them out.

We have gullibly swallowed whole this idea that constant accountability is a good thing, and the best way to achieve that is to make all of us precarious. Motivation by fear, fear of slipping out of the middle class, fear of slipping out of decent wages into poverty - it drives us to degrees we can’t afford and aren’t interested in, to working without pay, to competing solely on price, to putting up with sexual harassment and time theft at work.  We don’t join unions, because we want to be judged on our merits rather than time served, but what we don’t realize is that we aren’t being judged on our merits anyway. We don’t want to pay welfare, because we want to believe everyone who is unemployed deserves it. We refuse to believe in structural explanations for anything, because that would be to confront our own helplessness.

Don’t stop and breathe. Don’t take time off for kids. Don’t fail to apply for every opportunity. Don’t be the one who refuses to stay late. Don’t question the meritocracy. And whatever you do, don’t stop hustling.

Rules for internet sanity

1. Do not click on anything from Buzzfeed or ViralNova.
2. Remember that HuffPo doesn't pay the vast majority of its contributors. Value its articles according.
3. Pretend that shopping sites that require you to share your email before you can see their goods don't exist.
4. Do not read the comments, except at a very few well-moderated sites.
5. It's totally okay to hide Facebook friends who post stupid political crap all the time. (Corollary: Each of us is entitled to decide what is stupid political crap.)
6. Anyone who thinks Twitter follows must be reciprocal is probably a douchebag.
7. Do not click on anything from Upworthy. If something is truly interesting, a media source will be able to get my attention with a straightforward headline rather than mysterious linkbait.
8. Do not feel bad because you are not on Facebook AND Tumblr AND Pinterest AND Snapchat AND Twitter AND Google+. Just how many hours do you think I have in my day anyway?

Some stats

In 2013, I:

• Read 87 books
• Went on 25 hikes, for a total of about 140 miles
• Camped out zero nights
• Went to capoeira 113 times
• Taught 9 undergraduate and three graduate classes
• Had 1 surgery and 1 cavity filled
• Knocked 1 item off my half-bucket list

But I did not:

• Swim with dolphins
• Dance like no one was watching
• Twirl on the beach in a white dress with a scarf
• Run for mayor
• Buy a house
• Have a baby
• Adopt a dog
• Sing karaoke
• Master stringing the berimbau
• Try to take over the world

Truths about myself I find disappointing

1. Despite not being a morning person, that's the best time of day for me to write. My teaching schedule is carefully crafted to avoid teaching before 10 a.m., and I'd rather suffer any end of bodily ailments than exercise before breakfast. I can be civil in the morning, as long as you don't expect exuberance. But, much to my disgust, that's when I am most focused for writing.
   
2. Risk aversion has negative consequences, too. I'm okay with not losing all my money in Vegas or never experiencing the joy of skydiving. The flip side is that I'll hold on to mediocre circumstances far too long rather than take a small gamble, even if what I'm betting on is myself.
   
3. I like guys who will never move. Our family moved around a lot, and it was a valuable experience. I learned to meet new people. I learned how people are alike and cultures are different, and how socially constructed our world is. I can face moving again with aplomb. Yet, consistently, I am attracted to guys who are strongly rooted in the place they grew up in. The good news is, at least I live in New York City instead of Indiana now. The bad news is, me and the future Mr. Turducken will never pick up and move to London for a year.
   
4. One drink is enough. Not that I want to be an alcoholic, but any more than two drinks isn't worth it the next day. I'm never going to drink Indiana Jones under the table, and that kind of was one of my life goals.
   
5. I'm not really a fan of the Beatles. I guess I'm a Stones person, or even a Zeppelin person.

Post-op

Friday I had surgery on my shoulder. It was only the second operation I've had, the first being wisdom tooth removal half a lifetime ago.

The doctor made four small incisions and went in arthroscopically. He cleaned up a bit of frayed tendon, but the big job was removing a bone spur. (I do have photos - let me know if you'd like to see them at your next dinner party.)

Since I wasn't put under general anesthesia, coming out was pretty easy. My arm was numb for several hours, and then I had Percocet. Contrary to what everyone told me, all it did was make me even more sleepy. I had no fun dreams or, when I stopped, withdrawal problems. I did notice that when falling asleep I tended to go into REM even before fully being asleep, but that also happens when I'm very tired, and I've been very tired ever since. The pain hasn't been much, but I've been extremely mellow and tuckered out.

My left arm was put in a sling. I am very grateful that I am right-handed, as being one-handed was a challenge. Some things, such as typing, were just slowed down. But there are things you really can't do one-handed: Dishes. Putting on a bra. Shaving the armpits. Showering was a challenge anyway, as I had to keep the dressing dry.

As of today, the dressing is off, and I don't have to wear the sling all the time. I'm supposed to start using my arm so I don't lose too much range of motion - no more trying to hit Control-Alt-Delete with one hand! Taking a shower will be so delightful!

Lots of people sent well wishes. I am especially grateful to my boss, who took me home from the surgery, and to the man, who automatically headed over to the sink to do dishes every time he came over.

To all my happily married friends

To all my happily married friends: I see you on Facebook. Some of you have been together ten years; others, 20 or 40. You have no kids or little kids or grown-up kids. You also have bad days and fights, but there is something fundamentally different about you from the unhappy couples and my fellow singletons: You count on this person to be there, and together you form the center of a new world, more important than any of the other worlds you inhabit.

As we have gotten older, we have all begun to calcify, whether we like to admit it or not. We don't plan to leave Indiana or wherever it is we live. If you love me, you have to love my cat. We have children. We have a system for doing laundry, a philosophy of breakfast, and a habit of vacations. Some of this is justifiable, like the children coming first, and some of it is arbitrary. Those of you in happy marriages are no less creatures of habit, but you have at least one other person who is growing along the same strange path as you.

Those of us who are single find that there isn't really room for someone else in our lives. They have to fit in the cracks. They can't have a different laundry system or breakfast philosophy. Their other worlds - their jobs, their family of origin, their Everest climbs - all come first for them, as ours do for us. We don't dare throw away the self we've been developing for the last twenty years to create a new world. We just wait for the near-impossible, that one other person whose puzzle piece is twisted just like ours, to come along, and then get frustrated when no one quite fits.

So happily married people, believe me when I tell you I have no idea what it is like to be in your shoes. I can imagine talking bears and mass zombification and a female president, but I can't imagine what it is to be a binary star system. I literally can't imagine someone who relies on me, compromises for me, gives things up for me, all while I do the same for them. The best I can see is one partner willing to compromise for the other, and the other willing to accept it. And I see a lot of relationships like that, too. They're not unhappy, but they're not exactly happy, either.

I don't think most of us have what it takes to enter into a successful marriage. Few enough have it when we are young, daring, and carry light baggage. We get older and build up more of everything - except nerve, which dwindles.

To my fellow single people: Are you willing to give up your house? Your city? Would you give up your job? Your career? Are you willing to be separated from your parents, to quit your favorite hobby, to stop cooking your favorite food? Are you willing to spend money on things you've derided and curtail your spending on little luxuries?

No happy relationship would require someone to give up all those things, but if we say "no" to most of these, we need to face the fact that we don't have what it takes. We will never have the successful relationship we think we want. And maybe that's okay - if we can figure out what we want live for instead.

But for those of you who are happily married, remember how lucky, and how unusual, you are.

Home again

Back to New York, back to reality!

I've started going to capoeira class again, although I'm doing nothing at all on my left arm, and I realize even three weeks off leaves me out of shape. Also, it's hot in there, even with the a/c on. Everything about being back in New York is great, except for the heat wave we are in!

I'm gearing up for the school year, but unfortunately I'm missing a few important events. I fully intended to go to LIM's convocation - then I got a jury duty summons for that same day. And I'll miss Baruch's adjunct orientation because it's the day I come back from Oregon.

That's right - in less than a week I have to leave for Oregon for a family event. Hello New York, goodbye New York.

Things I seriously can't wait to do when I get home

• Read books made out of paper
• Sort through my mail
• Get my hair cut
• Sort through my pajamas
• Exfoliate
• Wear summer clothes
• Watch Much Ado About Nothing
• Use my Metrocard

Brasssssil, here I come*

In less than two weeks I leave for a month and a half in Brazil!

I will be spending my time in Florianopolis. (If you know your Brazilian geography, skip to the next paragraph.) It's in the state of Santa Catarina, in the far south of the country. Only one state, Rio Grande do Sul, is south of it. To the north is Parana. The Atlantic Ocean is to the east, and the tiny west border is shared with a thin finger of Argentina, with Paraguay on the other side of it. The city of Florianopolis is on an island, and it is the capital.

It's not necessarily the logical place to go (although it's not some obscure backwater I'm ultra-cool for discovering). Obviously, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo are the biggest tourist destinations in Brazil. Most capoeristas travel to Salvador, the stronghold of capoeira. And more adventurous types head off into the Amazon rain forest. Floripa is actually fairly popular among South American travelers. It's known for its nightlife and surfing. If you know me, well … maybe I'll try surfing!

So, why there? I wanted to go to Brazil, and I wanted to do capoeira. But as I was traveling alone, I wanted to go somewhere I'd at least know someone. I don't have any besties in Floripa, but I have met a couple of Capoeira Angola Palmares teachers from there, and they have beautiful games. So, why not? I'm sure I will have other opportunities to see the rest of the country.

I don't have much of a plan yet. I'll spend the first week on the far south of the island near Pantano do Sul, a sleepy village. No capoeira, I don't think, but some nice hiking. After that I'll head up to the city. At some point, I want to get on a bus and head to Iguacu Falls. And that's it! Everything else is up in the air.

*Harry Potter reference.

Grumpy, Dopey, and Sneezy

I have been suffering with a cold for the last week - which, for me, is a long time to be sick - and it shows no signs of letting up. Consequently, I've been a grumpus in spite of sleeping a great deal and supporting an entire orange grove with my drinking habits. I've realized over the last 24 hours or so, though, that my crankiness is not due entirely to this plague, which leads me directly to this self-confessional post.

Over the past few months I've been doing a lot of thinking about my life. Well, let's not kid, I've been pondering these same questions for the last couple of years: It's just that only in the last couple of months has my thinking borne any fruit. The questions are (a) What do I want to be when I grow up? and (b) Why do I keep making the same dating mistakes over and over again? (Because, you know, at some point I want to stop dating, and not because I give up in disgust.)

I'm going to be vague about the first question, but for those of you not in academia, part of the issue is that, even if I wish to remain in my current job, that requires decisions - where do I want to take my research, what do I want to teach - and if I don't, that requires me to decide a whole other set of questions. It's only within the past month or so I've actually discovered the answer to that question. The answer came seemingly as a bolt out of the blue over lunch with a friend, but in truth it was more like the result of a long calculation being carried on by various mental subroutines finally completing. I've been contemplating it ever since, but now I am pretty sure of where I want to go and, even more importantly, how to get there.

The second question is a harder one. I habitually date guys who I shouldn't be in serious relationships with. It's not that they're puppy-kicking jerks, but that they and I aren't right for each other, and I should know it from the beginning: I may deserve something else, but so do they. Frankly, part of me knows this from the very beginning. So why do I keep doing it?

I tend to assume guys are out of my league, I'm out of their league, or they're swell people but not the right person for me. (Look, if you're gay, 55, extremely religious, or already married, it's just not going to work out, no matter how lovely you are.) So I settle for one of the latter two categories. I said to myself one day, okay, look do you actually know - or have you actually known - any guys who you do think would be right for you? If there is no one at all, either you are being too picky or too hard or yourself. I have never believed in the idea that we all have exactly one soulmate, so surely in 36 years I should have encountered someone suitable. There must be someone out there that I can happily imagine waking up next to in another 36 years.

When I put it that way, the answer jumped out at me with terrifying speed from the nearest bushes, so to speak. Yeah, I have known someone like that. Now, I am not going to date him anyway*, but the point is, he isn't a unicorn. He's a real person, flaws and all, and if he exists, other men like him exist as well.

People keep asking me how my dating life is going or when I'm going to get back into online dating. The thought of going on dates just to go with dates makes me want to stab myself in the eyeballs. I'm willing to hold out for the good stuff, now that I am confident that it exists.

So, with all this, why am I cranky?

You have these breakthroughs, and you feel awesome for a little while, and then you realize that, in spite of knowing where you are going, and knowing how to get there, you still are standing in the same place. You still have to make the effort to climb the damn mountain. And you have a cold, and a big pile of grading, and you really just want to teleport straight to the top.

I have to stop looking at the mountaintop for a while, and just focus at the step right in front of me. Life isn't really so different from AA, or from completing a dissertation, it turns out.


* Look, there are people you just can't date. Your boss, your best friend's husband, your friend who lives in Indonesia, your sister's ex … the exact reason doesn't matter. The point is that circumstances, not the person himself, renders it impossible.

I should probably stop reading advice columns

If you ever find yourself asking, "Why do women…" or "Why do men…," just stop right there, unless the second part of that sentence is a technical biological question. In fact, don't just stop asking the question. Stop dating until you can learn that there is more variation within each gender than between them in behavior.

If you ever find yourself asking, "What does it mean when he/she…" stop right there and GO ASK THE PERSON YOURSELF, not the advice columnist or the entire internet.

And please, Google your question first, okay?

Rare political rant

Lately, I've seen a lot of the argument that "if the government is paying for your [x] with my tax dollars, it IS my business." At the moment I'm hearing this a lot from people who believe that the government has no business ever paying for abortions or birth control - but it's not an argument exclusive to the religious right. The targets vary, of course: "I don't want my tax dollars paying for bombs in Afghanistan." The sentiment is the same: My tax dollars should not be spent for things I don't believe in.

You know what, folks? Those aren't your tax dollars. Once you pay them, they stop being yours. (It's rather like giving a wedding present. You don't get to take it back, even if they hate it or get divorced.) Instead, they belong to this giant, awkward, inefficient committee comprised of most American adult citizens, some of us whom are more involved in our committee work than others. We call this "government." Yeah, it doesn't always work all that well.

The alternative to accepting this premise? Well, if it's still my money, I get to decide what to spend it on. I'm not sure why I need to go through the step of giving it to the government in the first place. I'm going to use mine to buy shoes.

"Get off the ledge, Turducken," you're saying. "You know perfectly well that it is only supposed to be spent for the public good. Clean air and police and national defense and that kind of thing. Stuff we can all agree on. Still, I should be able to channel my own money, into clean air instead of police, if I want."

The direct result of this belief - not a long strange journey down some slippery slope - is that our impact on our budget is exactly proportional to our income. Rich people get to run things. How do you like that?

Well, you know who would have love it? The founding fathers, that's who. Remember, under the original constitution, only landowners could vote. A great many of us (even among the white male set) can only vote thanks to later amendments. Maybe you're copacetic with this; I'm not. This is one of the many reasons I have no patience with the WWTFFD? line of reasoning: Said fathers were ahead of their time, maybe, but they're way behind ours.

But, hey, if you're into that - if you wish I couldn't vote and that my boyfriend was legally 3/5 of a person because papa Jefferson and friends said so - go ahead, argue that you personally should be able to control your tax dollars.

The alternative is to suck it up and admit that every one of us sends money off to DC to be spent on shit we don't want. That might be birth control for promiscuous ladies or bombs to kill starving Iraqi children. Maybe it's to print money not based on the gold standard or to support bizarre art projects. Maybe it's just to pay that annoying (not to mention incompetent) clerk in sub-basement 3 of some minor federal bureaucracy. Face it, anytime your democracy is bigger than two people, someone is going to regret the choices society makes.

So here's the thing: If you want to change government spending, you have to do one of several things. One, you can convince people it's a low priority. ("I'm not against birth control; I just think the government should pay for submarines first.") Two, you can convince people it violates or is key to a fundamental human right. Yeah, the Declaration of Independence declared certain rights "inalienable," but the Declaration is not actually part of our body of law, and we've never treated rights as inalienable. Human life is "inalienable" - except when the person has committed murder or is a fetus or is dying and in pain. Convince enough people birth control or alcohol or fracking is morally wrong, and we'll vote to stop spending money on it, or at least convince five Supremes to agree with you.

Can't do that? Well, keep fighting. But I don't give rat's patootie if in the meantime "your" money is being spent on things you think are wrong. ALL of us are in that situation, and if you are somehow more sensitive and delicate than the rest of us and can't handle it, that's still not our problem. The princess and the pea is not a policy-making guide.

Holiday travels

Greetings from Philadelphia, where I am hanging out for the weekend. I stayed in New York for Thanksgiving, although my parents came out to visit. Before that I was in Charlotte for the conference. And, yes, I'll be heading out to Oregon for some Christmas festivities.