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The war’s been going on so long, I can’t remember if I was originally for it or against it.

If I was for it, that only means the lies were successful. If I was against it, good for me. If I qualified my opinion, I was just being my usual qualifying self.

The war’s been going on so long.

“Drinkability,” as a rating of a beer, has to be among the most egregious bullshit terms ever devised by man. Drinkability. Drinkability. In a peer-reviewed paper (a peer-reviewed paper), drinkability is defined as “A beer that … invites the drinker to another glass.” Stop. Right. There. STOP. Stop, stop, stop. Right. There.

Drinkability is the category a brewer uses to hype his brew when every other category one can use has failed him:

“The customers think our beer tastes like gravel. They say it tastes like watered-down gravel.”

“That’s one of the categories?”

“No, that’s just the write-in votes.”

“Have you asked about wetness? Or fizziness? Or foofarallitude? How does our beer do on foofarallitude?”

“It’s not looking good, sir.”

“Hmm. Have you asked them about its drinkability?”

“Not yet. What’s that?”

“I don’t give a good goddamn what it is, just ask them about it. They’re going to get tired sooner or later.”

“Okay. How do you want me to spell that?”

I hate people.

Thucydides wrote this around 430 BC describing how Athens and the character of its citizens degraded during the long war with Sparta, but it should send an electric thrill of familiarity down the spine of anyone living here and now:

“To fit in with the change of events, words, too, had to change their usual meanings. What used to be described as thoughtless acts of aggression was now regarded as the courage one would expect to find in a party member; to think of the future and wait was merely another way of saying one was a coward; any idea of moderation was just an attempt to disguise one’s unmanly character; ability to understand a question from all sides meant that one was totally unfit for action.

“Fanatical enthusiasm was the mark of a real man, and to plot against an enemy behind his back was perfectly legitimate self-defense. Any one who held violent opinions could always be trusted, and any one who objected to them became a suspect…As a result…there was a general deterioration of character… The plain way of looking at things, which is so much the mark of a noble nature, was regarded as a ridiculous quality and soon ceased to exist. Society became divided into camps in which no man trusted his fellow.”

Thanks, George!

I saw some a couple days ago coming back from somewhere down South. Apparent ingredients needed: one sun, mist, rainbows. I win!

I comment on two blogs/bboards. I used to comment on more. I don’t comment on the two that I still comment on nearly as often as I used to. The reason, I think, is that the lively conversations that attracted me to these bboards in the first place have devolved into predictable kneejerk bloodbaths, with certain prolific parties on the left and right treating most new threads like they were WWI battlefields, fighting over every square inch of dirt whether it makes sense or not. The threads degrade into exercises in name-calling in the blink of an eye. So now, most times, I read a comment I want to reply to, I write a reply to it, then I erase it before posting. I think “why bother?” Sometimes I have an insight into something because of what I do or have done or where I’ve been. It usually doesn’t get posted anymore. Why bother? These people don’t need or want to know what I know. It’ll be just another square inch of dirt in Verdun.

These people aren’t interested in conversation. I know that’s a pretty broad brush, and not true for many, but it seems that way. It seems that way because those who do want to have a conversation, who want to learn or teach something, don’t anymore because they see the same battlefield I do.

It’s amazing: it’s almost as if there is a natural lifespan to a good bboard. Because eventually the Tribes find it and squash it and leave it when it’s dried and dead, and then they look for the next one to kill.

So here’s to the good bboards. May they spring eternally from the ashes of those that came before.