Intermittent Rant

For anyone that watched MTV back in its heyday when it ACTUALLY had music videos, “The State” may just ring a bell. For everyone else, well…let’s just say it rocked. It was a sketch comedy show that aired in the early 90’s and starred among several now semi-famous but then very obscure actors Michael Ian Black and Thomas Lennon. It was 30 minutes a week of wacked out sketches like “The Jew, the Italian, and the Redhead Gay” and “Monkey Torture”. It aired for a few seasons and was much beloved.

Well, those actors have moved on. Michael Ian Black went on to do a bunch of shows like “Ed” and Sierra Mist commercials. Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney hooked a few shows on Comedy Central like “Viva Variety” and now “Reno 911″. Now Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain have created “Stella”, which aired tonight. My initial reaction: I miss “The State”.

All of these sundry efforts have been cute and even somewhat amusing, but all in all, they’ll never recapture the glory, the triumph, the shear power of those “The State” years. Anyway, I just wanted to say I miss “The State”. I hear people out there are trying to petition MTV to release a DVD. God speed, young people, god speed…

It seems that many people I know are crossing over to the Right these days. I mean, who could blame them? The Republican Party controls the White House, The Congress, and the Supreme Court. It’s like they’re winning the culture war. Well, many have confessed to me their intention to declare their party affiliation as Republican. Fine. I’m an independent and always will be. But I’m an independent because I want to be, because I truly believe in it. And I truly believe everyone has the right to make their own decisions, that that is truly the American way…not to be told what to think or what to favor, but to decide for oneself.

But it’s funny how people tell me that they’re Republicans now. It’s like they’re coming out. It’s like it’s somehow taboo. It’s ironic for lack of a better word. The Republican Party, so rabidly anti-gay, has members that whisper their affiliation. Like it’s a secret. Well, not always. When they’re amongst friends, they’re not too shy. I’ve known a lot of conservatives in my lifetime. It’s like get two of them together and the snide remarks and self-righteous bullshit start flying. But then again, with liberals, it’s not that different. They don’t need backup. A lone liberal can be just as pompous. One liberal can be just as bad as two conservatives.

So like I said, I’m an independent…as I suspect like most Americans. Whether they’re willing to admit it or not.

I saw two really great movies today. The first one was The Cloud-Capped Star, an old Bengali film from the 60’s. It’s about this young woman from a middle class family fallen on hard times and how she struggles to keep them going. Her faith in her brother and in the beaux that is courting her compels her to do all that she can to keep them in their innocence. She ends up quitting school and getting a job to support her family. But somehow they all turn on her. It’s a clash between Romantic ideals and the real world. It’s almost Madame Bovary-esque. It reminded me of my mother.

The second film was The Man Who Copied. It’s playing in select theaters now and well worth seeing. Since I saw City of God – another great film — a couple of years ago, I felt compelled to see this as it seems that a lot of great films have come out of Brazil in the last few years. It’s about a guy who operates a copy machine in a little shop, a guy that earns peanuts and spends his time spying on a girl through her window with his binoculars. He eventually falls in love and tries to pursue her. That’s where I’m leaving off…trust me, it’s a great film. And very smart.

As of late, I’ve been hatin’ on Firefox. Don’t get me wrong…I’m no lover of IE, but Firefox, that great scion of the tech community, has gotten me so damn riled up with frustration, I must vent. The other day, I had Firefox fired up. It was just sitting there on the Google page. Nothing special. I was going to open a page, but I ended up running some queries, so like I said, it was just sitting there doing nothing. Or so I thought.

I was running a query and was amazed at how long it was taking. I mean it was just running and running and running. It got to the point where I was talking to the DBA. He had no idea what was going on. I was running sp_who2 and that was hanging. I was sure it was the database, but the DBA told me everything looked fine on his end. So then I fired up the ol’ Task Manager, and lo, Firefox was sucking up 99% of my CPU cycles. Motherfucker!!!

Well, it came as no surprise. You see, I’ve been collecting my complaints of Firefox for some time. Let me start by saying when Mozilla 1.0 came out, it crashed on me in 30 FUCKIN’ MINUTES!!! Fine. So Firefox comes out and I thought surely things have gotten better. WhenI fired it up for the first time, it took like half an hour to see the damn window. Well, it always takes half an hour to open Firefox. It takes seconds for IE to open.

Okay, whatever, you say. I’ve been using Firefox at home and work regularly, and I can tell you I’ve come to expect it to freeze on me on a daily basis. At least once a day — if not many — Firefox freezes on me and I sit there like a FUCKIN’ DICKWAD GIMP staring at the goddamn hourglass until I finally heave a sigh and kill the damn process.

And don’t get me started on PDF’s. I’m no lover of PDF documents, but the Internet is littered with them and it’s only a matter of time before I click on a link that turns out to be a link to a PDF, and alas, there I am, sitting like a RETARDED CHIMP while Firefox puts the moves on Acrobat…and sucks up all my CPU cycles in the process.

I’m a developer. I hate having to sit there and helplessly stare at my computer. I have a decent computer both at home and at work. But man, it’s gotten so bad, that I’ve thought about switching to Opera. OPERA!!! I know everyone loves to hate IE, but damnit, it opens up quickly, doesn’t get confused by Javascript, doesn’t freeze half the time. Hell, Firefox takes me back to the bad old days of Netscape 1.0, which also crashed on a daily basis. Has it really gotten any better than that???

But that’s okay…I’ll just hope that all of the current problems get fixed in Firefox 2.0…when it comes out sometime in 2012.

So I’m trekking around Washington like I always do…on foot, when I decide to give ol’ Mr. Lincoln a visit. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Lincoln Memorial, I think to myself as a meander through the throngs of tourists and midday joggers. It was a sweltering day beautiful as it were and the city was awash in vibrant colors. If any of you have been to the Washington, you’d know what a long, arudous journey it can be between the Capitol and the Memorial. Doesn’t seem that long. The walk is almost laughable. But there you are trudging onwards thinking when the hell am I gonna get there???

But I finally made it. I swept up to the top of the steps — one by one — seeing Honest Abe peek out onto the capital horizan. And there I was, all of a sudden, in the presence of the Great Emancipator himself in all his glory. It’s almost a religious experience…even after all the times I’ve been there. It always reminds me of the ancient Temple of Zeus from the days of yore…whatever yore means. And when you think about it, all the cities of the world…from Rio and its Christ the Redeemer statue at Corcovado to Paris and Notre-Dame Cathedral…the rest of the world is littered with monumental tributes in the name of religion. Yet here in Washington, our tributes are not generally for the sake of religious figures but rather ordinary men and women. OUR capital city contains tributes to fallen soldiers and great political leaders. Rather than Jesus or the Virgin Mary, we see visions of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

So then I think about what it is in the American spirit that impels us to “worship” these figures and give them god-like status in our American pantheon. But then it struck me. It’s not that we are raising them to the level of gods. All of these people stood for something, symbolized a value, and it is not these people that we are elevating, but the values they stood for. It is these American values that we wish to worship and hold sacred. It binds us all as Americans. When Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…that all men are created equal…”, when Martin Luther King said, “I have a dream…”, when Roosevelt shouted, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”, they were espousing our values.

So whenever I see a monument — which happens often in this city — I think about these values. I think about the American religion. It is something deeper than partisan rancor, deeper than Jesus. It’s the thing that truly unites all of us Americans. The anthem, the flag, the eagle all prostrate themselves in this temple, the temple of the great American experiment. So if a politician were to ask me how to get in touch with the American people, I’d smile and point to the Lincoln Memorial and say, “Talk to the man upstairs.”