NaBloPoMo 2008

I think I finally figured out why I don’t like Barack Obama. It has nothing to do with the color of his skin, or who he’s married to, or the fact that he’s a lawyer first and a politician second, or a politician at all. Nor does it have anything to do with the fact that he wasn’t my candidate of choice.

No, one of the reasons I dislike Barack Obama has to do with him and one of them is stone cold on me.

I wouldn’t call Steve Kroft’s interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday a good interview but it wasn’t necessarily bad either. Softball questions feel appropriate at this time in the honeymoon period. But watching the interview in which the Obamas, both of them, were spot on, not a hair out of place, not a misspoken word, not a single fleeting reaction even made me realize that I don’t like Barack Obama because he’s perfect.

Despite the myriad rumors about Obama – he’s a muslim; he’s a domestic terrorist; his campaign was being funded by foreign nationals trying to overthrow our government to name a few – so many rumors that his campaign started a web site specifically to address them, no one was able to find anything truly controversial about the man that he did not admit himself. Hell, the doubt about Obama ran so deep that requests for his birth certificate were so numerous that the Director of Health for the State of Hawaii had to issue an official statement saying that she personally verified the authenticity of the document.

Even though he has been the most closely examined candidate in presidential history neither objective nor partisan digging has been able to find a hair out of place, a misworded e-mail angrily sent, nothing to mar the man’s public image as an adult. Indeed, all of his youthful mistakes give him “character.” It is as if he’s been running for President since he was about 19 years old, as if every move in his life, even those youthful indiscretions, has been calculated to culminate in the moment during which he strode on to the stage in Chicago with his wife and his daughters by his side to claim victory in the election.

And the thing of it is, and this is the part that is solely on me, I want to believe him. I want to believe the image he presents: that he’s a good, decent man with maybe not exactly the same views as mine but with good intent to do the right thing by as many people as he can, to make life a little easier for those that have it the hardest, to make the world a little bit more fair.

But I know deep down in my soul that even though this President is my president – he’s the leading, bleeding edge of Gen X and chronologically we have a lot in common – he is, at bottom, a politician and when 100% of your experience tells you that lurking somewhere inside every politician is a disappointment it’s hard not to wait for the bomb to go off or the other shoe to drop.

The Bad, vol. 1: I asked for more vacation during my review. Request denied. “We can’t have a special leave class for one employee.” How about, let’s make the leave policy not suck so hard then?

The Good: I’m still getting the 5% raise, retroactive to my anniversary date in October.

The Aggravating.: I want out of our 401k plan. Legally I can do an in-service rollover of all my monies with no penalty if I never control the funds, Financial Institution A tells me. Yep, that’s sure true, says Financial Institution B, but your plan prohibits withdrawing any monies that have been contributed while you’re an employee. Oh, says I, who sets those rules. The plan administrator, says B. Our plan administrator tells me she has no control over the rules. Um, no, I’m hearing the same thing from two separate financial institutions and you’re telling me not-that-thing. Someone is either lying or mistaken. Please check into it.

I really didn’t want to know that: During our weekly meeting I mentioned a task in my workplan for a particular regional office. Of the two people in that office, he asked me, which of them does the bulk of the work on this project? I told him I had no clue. Apparently one of these two people is getting laid off, and soon. Having been laid off it makes me want to tell them both to prep. But I can’t, can I?

Forty-eight years ago today my grandfather had one day to live. It was a Friday so I expect that he got up, showered, shaved, made the coffee and had breakfast, and went to work like he’d done the previous four days in the week. He probably did a good day’s work that last day; after he died they hired three men to replace him where he worked.

I’m sure he had lunch, though I don’t know if he got a sandwich or if he took a lunch bag. I’ve never thought to ask my mother about that. I know for sure he had dinner with his family because, well, that’s the kind of family it was. I think my grandmother may have been working nights at the GPO then, though again I’m not really sure. It all kind of runs together into one big mushy family story, the details lost to time and telling.

The thing of it is: he had no idea when he got up the morning of November 18, 1960 that it would be his last day just the same as we have no guarantee of our tomorrows. Yet here most of us sit, whiling away time like it’s a renewable resource, like we’re sure that there will be a next month or a next year or even a tomorrow for us.

We are exhorted to carpe diem, to live life to the fullest, to make sure that all of our time is “quality time” yet we’re given no yardstick or guidelines for what that means (if the party people define living life to the fullest then most of us, in truth, are pretty much fucked; if it’s the fundies, well, the same applies) and this huge responsibility: don’t waste time.

Is it any wonder so many of us are uncomfortable in our own skins, cranky and dissatisfied no matter how many creature comforts we have?

1,440 minutes doesn’t seem like a lot of time, does it? If we’re lucky, it’s what we get in a day. If. we’re. lucky.

I admit it: I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly. It’s not cheap nor is it easy on the planet; it is a weekly after all. But it keeps me relatively up to date with pop culture. As one of my official duties at home is Minister of Culture (skip the cat eating spaghetti search on YouTube…trust me), it’s important to know what’s hot, what’s not, and what’s worthy of spending time on. Sometimes the way those three groups join is surprising.

This week EW put out yet another list issue: top 25 entertainers of the year. Typical of these types of lists, they also included a list of five entertainers to watch. Said list included Demi Lovato who at 16 is a apparently a huge star with the Disney channel set. She’s the star of Camp Rock and she has an album coming out most of which was written and produced by those other Disney Channel products The Jonas Brothers. And just by continuing to breathe she proves that all pop culture is now derivative.

Go ahead, plug “demi” into Google. I dare you.

You’ll get Lovato’s fansite, some YouTube video links, a link to wiktionary for a definition of the word demi (origin: latin; meaning: half) but right there in slot number two you’ll get the IMDB link for the original celebrity Demi. That’s Moore, Demi Moore.

Lovato: born in 1992 while Moore’s popularity as an actress was still high; also named Demetria. I may be stretching given that her mom was a Dallas Cowboy’s cheerleader, she was was born in Dallas, and has an older sister named Dallas which kinda says that maybe mom didn’t reach too far when it came to names, but when we’ve got the second wave of starlets with the same funny name that showed up on the scene 25 years earlier…yeah, I’m going with derivative.

QED: Love Don’t Cost A Thing

It’s amazing how many Fall chores there are. Today’s: Weed and mulch the front flower garden.

So…that was my afternoon. Oddly, it always makes me feel better to get my hands a little bit dirty.