'Bred Crumbs

My DJ Name: Cognitive D

Yeah, so maybe the last two entries (see below) are a tad contradictory. So be it. These days, while I've got plenty to be happy about personally, when I look beyond that, brief moments of rationality tinged with optimism get pummeled by worry, anger, and despair – the stuff of venting.

I'm trying to find possible silver linings in an Austrian-bodybuilder regime (at least a probably crooked car-alarm manufacturer won't be governor), but the search seems hollow. It could be as simple as this: I need a good night's sleep, and need to concentrate on taking heart in people who give me comfort and things that make me laugh in a non-we're-doomed way.

Such as the fact that there is a dance remake of Def Leppard's "Love Bites."

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Who's Laughingstock Now

With all the attention lately on the "California Crisis" – because to the news media, any problem is instantly a "crisis" – I was going to search the 'Net for ways other states are screwed up, and submit an essay in California's defense.

Well, frell that. California is about to, for the second time, elect some lunkheaded bad actor as governor. And this time, it's happening because of a Republican Party so drunk on power it can't even accept having lost an election a few months earlier, and because of a state govermental process so out of hand that people can idly slap their names on a piece of paper on a clipboard waved at them in public and cause an out-of-turn election that will add $67 million to the statewide debt they're supposedly so upset about in the first place.

And so, my insanity buffer shrinks. I had been able to downplay my worries about the travesties of the current federal government by taking heart that I live in San Francisco, and California.

Now the outer shield has now been shredded as surely as anything in one of Ahnuld's hyperviolent, anti-human movies. You know things have gone wrong when I'm thinking, Maybe I'll vote for Ariana Huffington.

America, heap your jeers and scorn on California. The humiliation is richly deserved.

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Mocha in the Middle

Last night, I found out in a blinding flash just how fast and far my political compass has wobbled. One minute, I was batting around comedy sketch ideas with friends, and the next, I was (gulp) defending Starbucks.

Like a lot of reflexively liberal people, I've tended to detest the Borg-like coffee chain. But over time, a few things have tempered my comtempt. I understood how great it is to have a Starbucks in an airport while blearily awaiting a 7 a.m. flight departure. I realized that it would be better for small cities (like my hometown) to have a Starbucks than to have no coffeeshop at all.

And, more important, the Frappuccino was introduced.

But the thing that opened my mind most was learning that, contrary to what I and a lot of others had assumed, Starbucks usually does not kill local coffeeshops. It most often has no impact, or even helps them.

So when everyone around me last night was enjoying the news of a stunt some San Francisco activists played yesterday, vandalizing several Starbucks to make it look as if they had closed, I concentrated on suppressing my seething, surprised to find myself sticking up for the company that still annoys me with its relentless sprawl and its phony cosmopolitanism. (My server is a clerk, and the sizes are small, medium, and large. You name them whatever you want, Starbucks. I don't care. I will not play the game.)

Soon the discussion wandered to other activists, such as PETA, whom most in the room deemed a little too crazy. Unlike PETA, someone suggested, at least the Starbucks trashers have a sense of humor.

"That's the thing," I said, not sharing in the laughter. "I've kind of lost my sense of humor about activists." Which pains me, given how increasingly alarming the dominant non-left is. But that's the damage done by the pointless-postwar-tantrum throwers and the animal-obsessed. They haven't gained the allies they so sorely need; instead, they've pushed friends they already had toward the arms of their enemies.

Thankfully, at least one credible crusader, '60s activist Todd Gitlin, is urging the underdogs to persuade and strategize rather than lash out. And there is much to be learned from the apolitical cautions a PERL programmer voices about the dangers of advocacy (what I like is infallible, and all else sucks). His concerns should be heeded not just by computer-language devotees but also by sports fans, Mac proselytizers, TiVo evangelists, and, yes, ardent fans of particular canceled sci-fi series. Above all, the advice needs to be considered deeply by anyone who thinks the current course of national political sentiment can be stemmed by acts of petulance.

"Passion doesn't convince," the author writes, quoting a colleague. "Passion makes you look like an idiot or an asshole."

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