i'm older today than i was yesterday

It’s my birthday today. Forty-five years. I’m not sure what that means, or if it means anything specifically, or even if it's supposed to.

I’m not much of a sentimentalist, although birthdays and New Years are about the only national holidays that I don’t consider hypocritical in most ways. They remain what they have always been: reasons to party. And numbers don’t mean much either, do they? I appreciate the experience that the extra time provides, and occasionally wish I’d known then what I know now, but I had to not know it at some point to be able to learn it, right? Chickens, eggs, always getting us into arguments.

this is our one demand

It was a busy, irresponsible summer full of visiting and hiking and revisions. But not much in the way of blogging. I’m not apologizing, I’m bragging. Just to be clear. There may or may not be in increase in posting now that the weather may or may not be getting less cooperative. Then again, there’s hockey to play.

Today, however, I came across the following - a creative, subversive, beautiful, and heart-breaking response to media complaints that the Occupy Wall Street movement has not stated specific goals. That they are just protesting, willy-nilly and all, and don’t have enough direction to their dissent. How dare they not have a published set of reasons! How dare they not have made a list!

This is their response, as copied and pasted from wilderside.wordpress.com: 

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

wikileaks and the emperor's new clothes

“Which country is suffering from too much freedom of speech? Name it, is there one?” Julian Assange

I didn't want to write this post. I just wanted to watch and post links. I wanted to be a spectator and hope for a good outcome. But here I am. Not writing about it was becoming a distraction that I don't need and so, in spite of the fact that it's a ridiculously complex issue, and that coverage of it in the main stream and alternate media is ubiquitous (if selective), here I am. I hope it's readable, and maybe offers a synthesis of ideas already circulating, but this is my disclaimer: I'm writing this for me. I need to process it here and go on the record. For me.

At best, I'll understand better how I really feel, the whole mess will make a bit more sense, and you'll have found something redeeming in the next many paragraphs to justify the battery power you use and the time I've stolen from you. At worst, I'll be as frustrated as I am right now, and you'll be asleep. Either way, for your entertainment, here's my brain, or maybe my brain on Wikileaks. For the record, the following is based on my understanding of the facts. I'm no journalist (nor do I want to be), or a lawyer, and I'm not doing any vast amount of fact checking beyond reading pretty much everything I can find on the subject. I'll try to avoid making gross errors of the facts, but if I do miss something, or get something wrong, it's an honest mistake. If you find such an error, please post the correction in comments and I'll update the main post.

To summarize then, Wikileaks is a journalistic enterprise dedicated to the ideals of transparency and open government. It supports these ideals by acting as a clearing house for whistle blowers, with systems from simple to sophisticated, designed to allow whistle blowers to provide Wikileaks with secret documents. Wikileaks vets the documents and then, after varying degrees of editorial perusal, they release them. They've been doing it now since 2006. Julian Assange was the original mastermind behind the idea and implementation, and he has remained the 'face' of Wikileaks throughout its existence.

While they've been operating for over three years, Wikileaks hit the big time this year with the release last spring of the Collateral Murder videos, versions both edited for length and completely unedited, of a US helicopter gunship attack on civilians that resulted in multiple deaths, including the deaths of two Reuters journalists. The video, if you haven't seen it, is graphic and disturbing. The audio of the pilots, gunners and their CO's is chilling and suggests a level of inhuman disconnect that shocked the world. Wikileaks was accused of editorializing the video, especially the length-edited version, to make the participant soldiers, and thus the US military, look as bad as possible.

They followed that up with the Afghanistan Logs, and then the Iraq Logs, two caches of military documents that provided unparalleled insight into both wars, the mentality behind the occupations, and revealed dramatically different stories and statistics than the US State Department and Pentagon had previously suggested were accurate. Finally, since the end of November, Wikileaks has been releasing in increments a cache of US diplomatic cables in what is now being called “cablegate”. In all three of the document release cases, Wikileaks has worked with major mainstream media sources, allowing seasoned journalists to scour the caches for weeks prior to public release, assist with redactions, and to help facilitate coverage and add legitimacy to their efforts, perhaps in response to the accusations of editorialization in the Collateral Murder video release. They also, in the cases of the Afghan and Iraq documents any way, invited the US government to participate in helping scour the caches and assist in redacting sensitive information that might put lives at risk, offers that were rejected.

In the summer, US Pfc Bradley Manning was arrested under suspicion of being the source of all of these leaks.

Also this summer, Assange was in Stockholm, Sweden to speak at a conference. He was later accused by two Swedish women of sex crimes under Swedish law. The allegations include sexual coercion and rape. Assange has completely denied any wrongdoing and accused the women and Swedish authorities of participating in a smear campaign against him on behalf of the US government. The lawyer for the two women says that they have no political motives. The allegations revolve around consensual sex that the women say became non-consensual, but the timeline and facts are convoluted, and the stories, so far, are just that.

Assange has now voluntarily surrendered himself to the UK police authorities in response to an international INTERPOL red notice requesting his detainment on a Swedish warrant. That warrant is not in relation to actual charges – no charges have been laid – but rather the desire of the Swedish police to speak to him IN PERSON. Suddenly that's a really big deal, even though Assange offered to make himself available in August and September, and was given permission to leave Sweden, and has offered to speak to investigators by Skype or other means since then.

The timing and circumstances are, needless to say, suspicious, and it's not hard to start drifting into conspiracy theory territory, but essentially, those are the facts and the end of the boring part. I say boring because, well, if you've been reading the news, and if you are Google-capable, then you can find it all out yourself. Go to it.

There is also a cult of personality issue here, and I despise the cult of personality. I despise unjustified fame being heaped on people of questionable character, whether it's heaped in response to talent or ability or luck or success. In a perfect world, fame would be reserved for those who were of the highest character only. But character isn't sexy. Character doesn't sell. And we do love the fall of our icons as much as the meteoric rise, don't we?

More important by far than Assange is or will ever be, is the underlying reasons and actions behind Wikileaks, and one of my frustrations is that Assange's soap opera is detracting from the message. It's the same problem I have with Black Bloc protesters that feel direct actions against postal boxes and corporate store fronts are an effective way to get an activist message of dissent across: It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of public perception, and a basically selfish and childish motivation to serve self ahead of the cause.

All of that said, the response to Wikileaks and cablegate has been electric and fierce. For the first time in such a public way, the governments of the West have embarked on an unprecedented extra-judicial attack against a non-American site, with massive Denial of Service hacker-style attacks being mounted against Wikileaks servers around the world, and pressure being applied to the “American” companies that have been hosting or allowing Wikileaks to work through them for parts of their operation. That response is a de facto admission that, as much as the US government protests that Wikileaks is only a minor inconvenience, they've really touched a nerve.

But why? What nerve have they touched? The US Government says that any disruption to diplomacy is only a minor inconvenience. If so, then why have they mobilized what amounts to an illegal attack on all things Wikileaks? An attack that, if perpetuated against the US government, would result in federal charges and aggressive prosecution. They are obviously afraid of Wikileaks far more than they are wiling to admit if they're willing to adopt the tactics of those they call cyber-terrorists to try to combat them.

I believe that the answer is obvious: Wikileaks is showing the world just how corrupt and morally vacuous our leaders actually are. As one writer put it, the emperors' clothes have just been shredded by the web, and the naked truth is that our political and plutocratic leadership is utterly devoid of anything remotely redeeming. In war, our “leaders” act like sociopaths, and incite and train soldiers to do the same, and in politics and diplomacy they act with all the aplomb and sophistication of three-year-olds fighting over the sandbox. Our leaders, in short, are not leaders at all. At least not ones worth following.

Several other pundits have also pointed out that, in the wake of the reaction to Wikileaks and Assange (especially if it is ever proven that the Swedish allegations are politically motivated), we will never be able to take self-righteous allegations against totalitarian regimes made by the West seriously again. The West has shown in the most public way that they are just as willing to suppress freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and dissent, as any of the regimes that they point at derisively to make themselves look better by comparison.

The illusion that we live in a free society has been completely stripped away. Our society may not be as oppressive as those totalitarian regimes, at least not on the surface of things, but the people in power are just as desperate to hold onto their power as any other dictator. When someone manages to pull the curtain aside, and we see not only the weak false-wizard back there, but see that the wizard is utterly naked and pathetic, those supposed leaders of the free world react with the same kind of violence and disregard for the law as any dictator does.

That we, as voters, are complicit in their tyranny just makes it a little more sad. 

Again and again, writers who see the value of what Wikileaks is doing, even if they question the details, have reiterated the concept that the best defense against Wikileaks and those who will inevitably follow it is a more open, less deceitful form of government, one that actually does work on behalf of people, and does so with transparency. If you are blameless, the logic goes, the reason for whistle blowers disappears. Even if accusations are leveled, it is easier to defend and prove innocence. 

That's a lesson that most of us are supposed to learn by grade one. I hope that Wikileaks and those who are like-minded manage to break the dysfunctional system we currently languish under so completely that re-making it becomes impossible. I hope that enough people open their eyes to the truth that we can reach a tipping point, and that this time, when the shit truly hits the fan, we can learn lessons from our history that actually stick.

I hope that Wikileaks makes it impossible for us to ignore the truth, and impossible to forget. This is, perhaps, an unrealistic hope. We've been here before under different circumstances, and supposedly we learned unforgettable lessons from those horrific times. Obviously, our ability to forget is directly proportional to our greed and selfishness and laziness. Maybe this time we can get it right. 

I know- doubtful. But then, I've been accused of being an incurable optimist before...

Sunday Rant: Wikileaks, war and wistful thoughts

It’s been a weird week, one that’s seen me off my feed, out of sorts and definitely not in any kind of groove. It’s left me feeling decidedly… wistful. It is, I have to tell you, a strange frame of mind in which to approach a Sunday Rant.

Not that there was any shortage of things to rant about this week. The United States is in the stretch run to mid-term elections, a campaign dominated by polarities and focused on voter apathy and rabidity, depending on which way you look. Late charging Democrats trying to buck the trend of mid-term decline are thankful for ex-witches and blatant bigots and homophobes, but it’s a case of hoping that the other team is more effective at shooting themselves in the foot than it is of pushing for hope like we saw a couple years ago. It does not inspire.

The latter part of the week was dominated by Wikileaks latest offering, a dump of nearly 400,000 more Afghan war documents. And with that dump, in spite of all of its disturbing statistics and revelations, Julian Assange started tending again. Stories of the internal confusion and strife within Wikileaks seem to be more captivating in some ways than the people that have and are dying over there, or the apparently common blind eyes being turned away from the casual brutality of torture, or the masses of civilian deaths.

The torture aspect caught my eye, perhaps because it was a big story in Canada last winter heading into the Olympics when our Prime Minister prorogued to avoid the shitstorm of attention our government was receiving in regards to our own complicity in Afghan torture. Instead of doing the honorable thing, Harper called it quits and closed parliament then, essentially postponing democracy until the heat died down in an “I’m taking my toys and going home” display of fear and obfuscation.

NATO's complicity in torture was a story that swayed the UK media for a while in the spring as well, so the Wikileaks documents that detail American forces also glibly documenting and then ignoring case after case of Afghani forces abusing and torturing captives is hardly a surprise. This isn’t, after all, a problem typical of any one country on either side of the conflict – it’s systemic.

Which means it’s all of us.

It seems to me that half way through the last century we humans were reaching for the brass ring in some ways, heading into a period of conflict over social justice that would dominate much of the rest of the century, creating organizations like the U.N in an attempt to move past nationalism, away from the atrocities of the first half of the century, stretching towards, perhaps, a better version of ourselves. That’s a bit of romanticism, but there was a movement, a leaning.

Better minds than mine have observed that this might not have been so much an evolution as a reaction, however. Perhaps, they suggest, we weren’t so much leaning into the light and backing away from the abyss. Perhaps the horror of what we had done – twice in less that forty years – resulted in a global revulsion, and that it was our species’ defense mechanism reaction to pursue noble causes and ideals to prove we were not the monsters we appeared to be. “Look,” we were saying to ourselves according to this argument, “we are not so bad. We have learned our lessons and will now embrace those ‘better angels of our nature.’”

But in spite of all of those cenotaphs and the reminders, “lest we forget”, we do and have.

I find the simple fact of Wikileaks, it’s existence, to be a hopeful thing. In spite of the tendency of the main-stream to try to focus on Julian Assange, in spite of his apparent need to be what he calls a lightning rod, I prefer to focus on the organization itself and on what they are trying to accomplish. While the Pentagon and US Government are looking for ways to silence them, Daniel Ellsberg, famous leaker of the Pentagon Papers that so damaged the US campaign in Viet Nam, has applauded the latest dump. He said he’s been waiting for this for forty years.

We’ve all been waiting for this for forty years, and longer.

The Pentagon says these leaks are dangerous, that they undermine operations and put the lives of sources and assets at risk. (Aside: If the danger is so total and obvious, where are all of the stories confirming the assertion?) Assange argues that there is always a risk, but that Wikileaks has made every attempt to protect human lives, and that the cause of exposing military and government dishonesty, of forcing transparency, represents a goal that justifies what risk does exist. Is this a case of the ends actually justifying the means? Or is Assange simply making the same argument that our governments and military leaders do?

The Pentagon Papers revealed a level of government and military dishonesty in regards to Viet Nam that was massive enough to derail the American war effort there and end a useless war. The story here is the same. The dishonesty continues, and our governments strive to make heroes into villains in an effort to hide their own complicity and distract us from the truth.

This quote by Barry Lopez has confounded me in wonderful ways since I first stumbled upon it a year ago. I think it goes to the heart of the matter:

"How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."

I find myself, in wistful fits like I’ve experienced this week, hoping like hell that we’ll reach a tipping point where more of us lean into the light than not, and where we’ll make choices proactively instead of reactively. Perhaps there will be collateral damage in that movement towards the light. Maybe it’s unavoidable that, in such a fucked up world, there’s no way to avoid breakage no matter how pure the intention, or how just the cause. Like Mr. Lopez says, it’s a paradox.

I remind myself that it’s the journey that counts, not the destination. It’s the leaning itself that is the goal. If we lean (I tell myself) then the light will come all on its own.

P.S. I know, not much of a rant. There was barely even any swearing. Sorry. I have more questions than answers (even more than usual) this week. But that’s not always a bad thing.

P.P.S. And this in late: One of the subjects of last week’s Rant, Alex Hundert, Canadian activist and dissident, was arrested again yesterday. The charges have not been made public.

Sunday Rant: on dissidents, criminals and Nobel awards

The Real News published this story on Saturday about Canadian activist Alex Hundert’s ongoing battle for the right to speak in the wake of the G20 debacle in June. Hundert has been an activist, and a voluble one, for many years. Watch the video to get a bigger picture of who he is and what he stands for.

He was arrested back in June in anticipation of the G20 in Toronto, preemptively targeted as one of many activist leaders in a blatant attempt to shut down protests. This, of course, didn’t work. Activists are an anarchistic lot, and while leaders do exist, their role is less to organize than to galvanize, and the dissent goes on with or without them.

This isn't just a Canadian trend. The current criminalization of dissent applies in the US too, where activists have been being rounded up, just like in Canada, while engaging in such subversive acts as questioning policy on LBGT rights, DADT repeal, the use of torture, and America’s ongoing (never-ending) war efforts. Just as it’s happening in Europe and Russia and Israel, all supposedly democratic, developed bastions of human rights.

One of the conditions of Hundert’s original $100,000 bail was to not participate in protests, so he didn’t, in spite of being a fairly obviously infringement of his right to free speech. Then he participated in a panel discussion in a lecture hall, at a university, as an invited speaker, inside, without signs, with an “I want to be here” audience.

Naturally, he was arrested for breach of bail conditions. Apparently a panel discussion is now the equivalent of a protest.

Hundert was just released, after another four weeks in custody, with an additional, coerced condition on his bail, one that makes not participating in protests seem mild in comparison. The new condition precludes him from any public discussion of his political views. A complete public gag order. He might as well be in jail, which is where he was going to stay rather than acquiesce, but they literally threatened him with solitary confinement for the duration if he didn't sign off on the condition.

Offended yet?

Meanwhile, another much more popular story this last week was the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo of China, another dissident and activist, a proponent of peaceful, non-violent dissent, a participant in the Tiananmen Square protests and a co-author of the Charter 08 document in support of democracy and civil rights in China. For writing and signing that document he was arrested, convicted of subversion of the government, and sentenced to eleven years in prison.

Except for the Chinese government, the award is applauded. The Chinese Government’s reaction (calling the award antithetical to the mandate of the Nobel Peace Prize and reaffirming their stance that Liu is a criminal) was universally frowned upon as the pathetic attempt at spin and propaganda that it is.

On October 8th, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Liu and joined the chorus of world leaders asking China to review Liu’s imprisonment. This was the same day that Hundert was found to be in breach of his ‘no-demonstration’ bail condition.

I guess the lesson here is that dissent in China is noble, but in Canada, the US or the rest of the “developed world”, it’s just criminal.

The hypocrisy is fucking nauseating.

This seems to clearly fall into the “we’re going to look back on this and feel pretty stupid” category. I’ve talked about this before, about our social myopia when it comes to doing the most convenient thing now while ignoring the consequences (and the irony).

So, while the world applauds Mr. Liu’s Nobel (appropriately), and he enjoys it from his cell, the Canadian dissident Alex Hundert will be appealing the coerced condition of his bail denying him free speech. He’ll do it in a month, the earliest opportunity that the law allows.

Until then he'll essentially be under house arrest, his dissident thoughts locked and ankle-braceleted inside his head, away from the flaccid, apathetic ears and minds of the Canadian public. Just as Mr. Liu is closeted away, all reference to his award banned and scoured from the Chinese internet.

But that’s the way we like it, right? If only those trouble makers would stay quiet, we seem to believe, it’d be so much easier to go about doing the bigger-better-faster-more thing, accumulating our toys and our debt, making the fat politicians and greedy capitalists happy and rich. That’s the way we do it in the developed world, right? Like in China.

You want a quote? Here’s one:

How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think. - Adolf Hitler

Maybe it’s time we did more thinking.

(P.S. Micheal Bérubé shut down American Airspace this week. This makes me very sad for he is a great thinker and his blog was a wonderful experience. His last post is here.)

Speak Loudly and Carry a Banned Book

It's Banned Book Week.

I wrote earlier this week about the trending Speak Loudly movement that's growing on Twitter and in the blogosphere. Well, whether accidental or intentional, the trend bleeds nicely into Banned Book Week, which starts today. If you're on Twitter, check out #BannedBookWeek and #SpeakLoudly for lists, quotes, author endorsements and some nifty twitterwit. SpeakLoudly also has its own, brand-spankin' new site, which is very cool.

All of this momentum is the joy of a confluence of current banning news (Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson), and the regularly scheduled Banned Book Week festivities. When you're thinking about banned books and why people get to antsy about them, understand this: Very little pisses writers and readers off more than someone thinking that literature shouldn't be available to people.

But then, if you read blogs, I'm preaching to the converted already...

If you check out the ALA's Top 100 Banned Books list there are some surprising and some not so surprising pieces of literature showcased. I find it hilarious that Harry Potter is considered too dangerous for anyone. And Of mice and Men? Really? (And by "really" what I really mean is, "What the fuck?")

So today, because this whole blog-thing started out with quotes, and because I said pretty much all that I wanted to say about banning books in the aforementioned post, and because I'm pressed for time, I thought I'd just provide a nice list of quotes on the evils of censorship. You know, in honor of my roots...

Here are my favorites:

"Libraries should be open to all except the censor." John F. Kennedy

"If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed." Benjamin Franklin, 1730

"All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States -- and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!" Kurt Vonnegut

"A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to." Laurence Peter, professor of education, 1977

"Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail." Alfred Whitney Griswold

"God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide."
Rebecca West

"Every burned book enlightens the world." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." Oscar Wilde

"The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame." Oscar Wilde

"In every cry of every man,/ In every infant's cry of fear,/ In every voice, in every ban,/ The mind-forged manacles I hear." William Blake

And finally, because profanity is trending here in thinkingoutloud-land these days, and because he said it like a motherfucker:

"Take away the right to say 'fuck' and you take away the right to say 'fuck the government.'" Lenny Bruce

Me? I've managed to put enough scratch together to go buy Speak, so I know what I'll be reading tonight.

UPDATE:

The response of bookish bloggers everywhere has been truly remarkable. There's even a list of blogs on the subject that continues to grow and grow. Check it out (along with a great post) at Reclusive Bibliophile and take a few minutes to appreciate an amazing video of Laurie Halse Anderson reciting a Speak-inspired poem called Listen.

Speak, and Speak Loudly

I have to keep this short today (rarely an easy thing for me) as I have miles to go editing the novel. Let’s see if I can find ‘short’ in my vocabulary.

First, there will be a post on this article from the SBS in Australia on Wednesday or Thursday. It makes me fume in barely-expressible ways and I’m hoping that more stories on the report mentioned will surface before then so I can, perhaps, gain a little more perspective.

Tomorrow is World Alzheimer’s Day, so I’ll be busy elsewhere. If you get through your blog reading list of stuff, feel free to revisit my post on the subject. Better yet, if you blog and the subject resonates, join the cause and add your voice.

Today though… well, today I’m going to jump on Twitter's #SpeakLoudly bandwagon in light of this week’s controversy regarding Laurie Halse Anderson's YA book Speak, the story of a girl who is raped and must deal with the excruciating aftermath of that event. It’s an important story and, by all accounts, superbly written. When I have a budget for book buying again (there are aspects of poor artist life that I don’t like), it will be one of the very first books on my ‘to buy’ list.

Speak and Ms. Anderson are big literary news this week because Wesley Scroggins, a Business Management Professor in Missouri, has taken it upon himself to mount a campaign to ban the book from high school libraries because he considers it pornographic. Apparently Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five is also unworthy and dangerous. If you’re a fan of Sugar at The Rumpus (and you really, really should be), then you’ll know what I mean when I say that it sounds like Ms. Anderson writes like a motherfucker. This, in turn, seems to offend Mr. Scoggin’s delicate sensibilities.

Rather than see past his own overgrown social myopathy to the simple truth that the real is very often not pretty, and that writing about stuff that isn’t pretty is important, nay, vital to helping people (especially our youth) see the world for what it is, warts and all, Mr. Scoggins thinks that we should protect young people from said truth by banning anything he considers dangerous from the libraries of the world. As if ignorance ever solved anything.

We, of course, know better. We know that the ostrich method of dealing with tough stuff is bullshit. And we hopefully also know that fiction – real, hard, ugly and transforming fiction – can be an agent of expressing truth that is as or more piercing and disarming than any real news story can be.

That’s one of the many things I love about fiction: It can take us to places, put us in situations that we will (hopefully) never have to actually deal with in the really-real world, but that we still need to acknowledge and own. Fiction, good fiction, is an agent of empathy; perhaps one of it’s most powerful ones, and we live in a world that needs more empathy, not less; more knowledge, not ignorance; more truth, not a fucking cowardly commitment to denial and lies.

The response to the proposed ban has been heartwarming and heart breaking at the same time. #SpeakLoudly is trending nicely on Twitter and the lit blogosphere is rallying. For proof of that, check out Ms. Anderson's comments, Pimp My Novel, [Bloggers [[heart]] Books], Lisa and Laura Write, and C.J. Redwine's poignant post at The Last Word, just for a few quick examples.

Book banning just boggles my mind a bit, especially when the reasons are so spurious and the topic is so important. I find myself wondering how those of us who are proponents of banning can live lives so full of fear that ignorance seems like a better choice than reality. I don't get that kind of denial. It just seems pathetically selfish.

And yes, I'm being judgmental, and I'm okay with that right now. I'll feel remorse later. Maybe.

There’s a long way to go yet before we get to rest, so follow the links and join the cause, please. You can get a little ribbon for your Twitter and FB icons at Twibbon if you search for SpeakLoudly, join Laurie's FB page here , follow the Tweets here and here, and you can Tweet your ass off using the #SpeakLoudly hash tag. And buy Speak at a local independent bookstore too.

Okay, my novel beckons, and she's a jealous mistress...

...one of those days...

Do you ever have one of those days? You know the kind....

One of those days when the overwhelming weight of the world just seems to be bearing all of its deep gravity well down on you? When all of the culpability of the species just seems to be unfucking avoidable and you have to own it, hold it to you at the same time that you're trying to tear it out of you?

One of those days when you can't resist to the urge to take on the sins of your race, your country, your gender, your species? When every story, every song, every image reminds you of the incredible fuck up this all is, all of it, in spite of the good things, because of the unmitigated horror of the bad?

When the black hole is so dense that it's hard out get out of bed, off of the floor, out the door? When the sunlight hurts and smiles feel like razorblades? When the thought of peace, the ephemeral unlikelihood of it, the whisper of its possibility and the truth of its goddamn improbability, reduces you to tears?

When you want to slap every child you see push another down, ram your car into every self-involved driver that didn't see the person they almost ran over, strangle every self-serving politician you watch lie, again and again and again, destroy every person that ever hit their spouse in anger, knowing the whole time that it's the wrong answer to every one of those situations and not caring?

Knowing that even if you could, the shame would just be worse afterward?

One of those days when you can't see the hope through the fear, or the love through the hate, or the intelligence through the ignorance? When bigotry seems to be the rule and tolerance – not even real acceptance, just tolerance – looks like it's about a million fucking light years away from being possible?

When laughter makes you want to cry, crying makes you want to scream, and honesty makes you want to smash every mirror in the world?

One of those days? Do you know the kind I'm talking about?

I'm having one.

Sometimes it's good to just sit in awe and fucking own it for a day.

S'okay though. It's just a day. Tomorrow's a new one, and things'll be better. It's just one day.