Remembering New Orleans

Forgot about this story:

My roommate Kevin and I were hanging out in New Orleans, helping to get a shop set up in riverwalk.  I don’t quite remember how we got suckered into it, but someone convinced us to spend our last $30 or so on lightstick neckalaces to resell at all the bars.

We trudged off, in search of bars with no covers, and finally found one down toward the canal street end of things…  But sadly enough, when we go in, the bar was about 20x20 and there was no one there…  two salesmen types fresh from a convention, two working girls working the salesmen, a bartender, and a band who was slated to go on in a few minutes.  Dead, dead, dead.

We were planning our exit, when the band took the stage.  And a few bars into the first set, their pyrotechnics went off.  4 people in the bar, and the band has frickin smoke pots, fountains, flash-bangs, etc.  So-so band, but light show was definitely a-list, and worth sticking around for the oddity of it all.

The hookers started dancing with the guys soon enough, and  they convinced the salesmen to buy all of our necklaces – or at least enough to pay us back and pay for beignets and coffee the next morning.

Best city in the Fuckin’ world…

Progressives

I tend to be tolerant of the social conservatives, even the silly ones.  I disagree with most of their tenants, but with a few vocal exceptions, they seem a nice enough bunch of folks.  I hesitate to judge people as backward or savage, since by some future morality, we will all be judged harshly.  We will either be judged as backward and repressive like we judge the Puritans, or perhaps as amoral and debauched as we consider the Romans.

Morality changes, and any time we project that our current morality will be the future morality we have a pretty bad track record.  Yet historically, people always assume that their current morality is the truest morality.

So I don’t mind the social conservatives, although I don’t vote for their candidates, and I wouldn’t want to subscribe to their newsletters.

Progressives on the other hand, are more fun to drink with.  At least they used to be.  Increasingly, especially as the election looms, many seem more and more likely to look for offense -- which, to me at least, is pretty tiresome.  I judge their current platform harshly, and think many of it’s ideas don’t stand up to logical scrutiny or the lessons of history. 

The current crops of progressives seem resistant to consider alternative viewpoints, and are increasingly ridged in their viewpoints.   Their politics don’t seem like philosophy to be debated, but instead dogma which must be repeated.   There seems little discussion of policy choices, only a repeating of a few select facts, an agreement that the other side is stupid and monstrous, and a lot of nodding. While many progressives consider themselves open-minded and independent, there seems little leeway or difference between their opinions and those of their peers.  They are the new grey flannel suits, conformist and unyielding with surprisingly little room for individuality.

I suppose it’s inevitable.  Historically, progressives – be they suffragettes, prohibitionists, Bolsheviks or whatever – tend to be a pretty arrogant bunch (which can be a good thing).  They are always ready to march -- occasionally to a better future, but occasionally off a cliff.  Given their track record -- maybe a 30% average of real lasting change, with an equal chance of atrocity or genocide – you’d figure progressives of any era would be a bit less strident, and maybe a bit more careful or critical of the platforms they embrace.

But here we are again, marching in yoga-panted lockstep toward uncertainty.  Let’s hope for the happy 30% this time around.

Smartguy no more?

I’m a smart guy.  9’s on my Iowas as a kid, invited to John’s Hopkin’s as a teen, Ivy league SAT’s as a highschool dropout,  Aptitude scores in the top percentiles, Member of mensa, etc.

Whupdedoo.

I play it off like I don’t much give a shit, but it’s been a source of pride.  No matter how much of a fuckup I was, I could always look at the test scores as proof positive that I might, one day, be worth a shit.(Other folks have used the scores as evidence of my wasted potential.)

So imagine my dismay, when in the latest round of testing for my poor beat up brain, I scored  (gulp) “average, to high-average IQ.”  WTF is that?  I’m a “superior to very-superior” kinda guy… At least I always have been.

So  I’m left with three possibilities:

1)      The test was wrong,  or they dumped the data because it was more than 2 standard deviations high.

2)      Although my memory is intact, my analytical abilities have decreased.

3)      I was never as smart as I suspected.

A bit of the old irony…  I am more successful than I have ever been.  Great family, most wonderful wife in the world, making good money, etc.

But, as is so common to getting older, I have a little less potential.

I am reminded that we all get to a point where life stops giving you things, and starts taking them away.

And I hear that lonesome clock ticking.