Fifteen Minutes

Oh dear. Sarah Palin was at a book signing outside a Border's bookstore in my beloved hometown, and the interviewer asks people attending about their political views. What follows is a display of blaring knuckleheadedness that wrenches the stomach. It's a parade of nincompoops so profoundly clueless that they lack any awareness of their cluelessness.



I wish I could say I'm amazed, but I can't. The fact is that I've known a lot of people like this from back home, and I frankly don't know what can be done to get them to come to their senses. I'm immensely proud to be a Buckeye, especially last Saturday, but it's things like this that leave me embarrassed and close to despair.

(From NewLeftMedia, h/t Matt Yglesias via Ramou)

It was about two years ago, not long after SureShot started sleeping on the couch in my living room when his marriage broke up once and for all. He had found someone new, we'll call her N., back at his hometown, way off in the deep dark south of Germany, even though he thought he had turned away from home forever. And it was good, very good, he couldn't stop raving about her. It was giving him a new lease on life just when everything seemed desolate and cruel. At the time, neither one of us knew whether it would be just a romance on the rebound, a flight to comfort while the rest of his world was crashing down around him, a way to feel like a geiler Typ again, rather than a failure at everything that mattered. If that's what it was, I told him, then it made sense, it was just what he needed. But he could already tell that the relationship might have staying power, and he was willing to do what he could to make it last (and it has). I let him keep talking, egged him on, told him to soak himself up in it, take his shot at good luck and run with it.

One night he was telling me about his last visit with N., showing me pictures on his mobile that were getting increasingly racy. "You won't believe what she was doing," he gushed, "listen to this ...", and I started to recognize which way this was going. He was gathering momentum, pretty soon nothing be able to stop him.

"Whoa, whoa," I broke in, "wait a minute, don't tell me everything you're doing with your girlfriend!"

He looked back at me skeptically. "Why? We know we can trust each other. Why does there have to be something we can't talk about? Does there have to be something sacred?"

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HAST DU ZEIT, MIR EIN PAAR FRAGEN ÜBER DAS LEBEN ZU BEANTWORTEN?

WIE GEHT DAS MIT DER LEIDENSCHAFT?
WAS BRAUCHT MAN FÜR EINE POSITIVE LEBENSEINSTELLUNG?
WIE ENTSTEHT MUT?

WELCHE FARBE HAT ANGST UND WIE KANN ICH SIE UNSICHTBAR MACHEN?
WOHER KOMMT DER MENSCH UND WOHIN GEHT ER AM ENDE?
WIE FÜHLT SICH PERSÖNLICHER ERFOLG AN?
WANN WAR EIN LEBEN LEBENSWERT?
WO FINDE ICH, WAS ICH SUCHE?

ICH BIN BEREIT, NACHMITTAG.
AUF SENDUNG.
WENN DU ANTWORTEN FÜR MICH HAST, GIB MIR BITTE EIN ZEICHEN.
ICH BIN DORT, WO ICH IMMER BIN.
IM GEIST. IM BAUCH.
IM MOMENT ZUHAUSE.

DANKE, NACHMITTAG.

My birthday present back to everyone else

This is embarrassing. It's embarrassing because as I read through these "rules", I can think of examples of my own writing in which I have "fulfilled" almost every one of them.

(h/t Plutonium Page)