freerange

So I’ve been entertaining various topics for blog posts, and they’re all tremendous uppers. I was thinking of writing about the horrendous video of a young woman dying in Tehran (no, I didn’t watch it, and I never will; the images I did see traumatized me enough) and my extremely complicated feelings about the uses of images of violent death and martyrdom and this crazy idea, widely circulating, that we are morally obliged to watch this video. Then I decided I just couldn’t bear to think about that for a moment longer. Then I thought about writing a letter to President Obama about how he needs to get cracking on LGBT rights, and making it as eloquent as I could and then posting it here too to encourage everyone else to do likewise. And then I thought about how much I wish that I could think of something funny to write about instead, because I’m sick of being all serious and political and I’m sick of the goddamned news, sick of people shooting each other, sick of going to these places in my head.

This is starting to sound the beginnings of heaven knows how many other entries that I’ve written for this blog. Stephanie gets het up about Something Important, Stephanie considers writing weighty post about Important Thing, Stephanie develops fatigue, depression, and/or disgust over her inability to stop obsessing over said Thing, Stephanie puts on a pot of chickpeas, recommits herself to the simple things, and writes a blog post about nothing.

Yup.

Regular readers will notice that I changed the header photo. I took that one yesterday morning when I was watering our little plot of chard, tomatoes and peppers. I really wouldn’t have had to water, because last night we got a big thunderstorm, complete with downpour, which barely caused a break in the relentless heat of the last few days, and instead transformed our streets into sizzling steam baths. It has been so hot that we dragged our air mattress downstairs to the living room and have slept there for the past three nights; even with air conditioning, our upstairs bedroom is nearly intolerable. The heat barely breaks at night; by 6:30 in the morning it’s already hit 80 and breathing the air outdoors is like having peanut butter spread on your lungs.

As a consequence of which I haven’t been out much this week. I’ve had a long list of household things to do anyway, things like clearing out all the hazardous waste in our basement (legions of half-empty paint cans, mostly from previous owners) and delivering it to the proper authorities; cleaning the freezer (longtime readers will be happy to know that the last two pints of tatsoi finally went to Jesus in the compost pile) and discovering that we still have what I might conservatively estimate to be six hundred jalapeno peppers from last summer in there; taking two online trainings required of foster parents by the state, trainings on medication administration and the prevention of bloodborne illness so poorly written and insultingly easy that they made me fear for the populace on several fronts; hiring a locksmith to outfit the basement, thereby making it easier for us to lock up the booze, exercise equipment, and cat litter, the latter of which we have learned is particularly irresistible to children.

I haven’t gone running outside for over a week, because I’m too wussy for this heat. I feel cooped up and sick of the internet, which is full of crappy news and endless e-mail solicitations from progressive groups proclaiming imminent catastrophe over one thing or another if I do not contact my elected officials immediately to demand A, B and C. I finally unsubscribed myself from the CREDO e-mail action alerts, and when I got the little box asking for an explanation for why I’m leaving (“DON’T LEAVE US!”), I was pretty close to honest: Your e-mails make me feel like the world is ending, and I need a break from that. I might also have added that while my representative is a moderate Democrat who might do with a call or e-mail nudge in the right direction now and again, my senators are Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback, and getting Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback to listen to reasonable arguments is as futile as, say, trying to convince Madonna that she is not the Savior of Africa.

I thought about switching to entertainment news, which I do sometimes when the world is too much with me, but entertainment news has become irredeemably sullied by Brangelina, about whom I do not give a flying fuck, and reality television, which I do not watch, understand, or know anything about. After writing NPR a cranky e-mail to complain about their recent use of one of those completely pointless, pseudo-news-generating, scientifically worthless online polls that infect almost all news sources these days (“Do you think Obama should be harder on Iran? Yes or No?” Thank you, NPR, for this invaluable forum in which to express myself), I turned to Entertainment Weekly, which is what I consider to be the highbrow source for entertainment news, to find another online poll: “Pick a side: a) Jon b) Kate.”

Look. It’s not that I’m not shallow. It’s more that I’m old-fashioned. I just happen to believe that in order to worthy of the vapid obsessions of the American people, a person needs to have revealed him or herself to have some degree of talent, or least a talent for tricking people into thinking he or she has talent. A hunger for publicity should not, in and of itself, be grounds for granting it to someone. There is something deeply weird about our culture’s current fascination with all these unremarkable nobodies who somehow managed to get famous for being famous, and while I’ll have to leave the analysis to someone with a better understanding of the phenomenon, I’d like to register my disapproval at their mucking up my efforts to downgrade my daily reading material.

I think I’ll switch to reading about British celebrities, and see how that goes. I read earlier on Jezebel that Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint went to a bar and got so soused they couldn’t pronounce the words “Harry Potter.” WOOO!! Now there’s a piece of news that won’t ruin your morning.