Viagra

I've decided that Obama works like a treatment for erectile dysfunction among right-wing males over a certain age. I have a word of caution, though: In case of a mad on lasting more than 12 hours, please seek immediate medical attention.

Recipe for disaster

The health care reform issue has become the definitive clusterfuck . I've reached the conclusion that the millions of people without health insurance have zero political clout. That's zero as in zero, zilch, zip, nada. In congress, the Democrats can't agree on how to proceed, and Republicans have decided they won't proceed at all. There are too many Democrats elected in red states who are intimidated by the Republicans, and the Republicans have basically devolved to the point that their only remaining agenda item is to hand Obama a crushing defeat on this issue.

Millions of voters don't have health insurance, but there are many more millions who do and they aren't in the mood to risk it on systemic changes. See previous references to "I got mine -- go fuck yourself."

Democratic indecision, Republican obstructionism, public apathy and antipathy. Those are the ingredients. Stick 'em in a bowl, stir 'em up, and place in a pre-heated oven to get clusterfuck cake, zero servings. Messed up the whole kitchen without a damned thing to show for it.

ADDED 11:06 AM, SAME DAY:

Laura 1973 wrote: i would just like a straigh answer on this health care. i have heard some many stories on it.all i know my health insurance is okay, i DO NOT repeat DO NOT want to paid for someone else inusrance for them, the way i see it no one is helping me to support my kids not even the fathers im not going to help someone else, get a job and get your own insurance

Copied and pasted verbatim from the opinion page of the local newspaper's website. A comment by a Texan illustrating the point presented in second paragraph above -- with the spelling, grammar, and punctuation I'd expect.

ADDED 2:18 PM, SAME DAY:

And then, there's this.

Mrs. bee and I have been AARP members for several years, and it's one of the better organizations I've joined. They send me a pretty good magazine each month; it has an excellent crossword puzzle and a few articles in each issue worth reading. Plus, I got a deal on homeowner and automobile insurance through AARP that I'm really happy with. All factors considered, AARP membership has been well worth the ten bucks a year, or whatever the dues are. If a bunch of dimwits want to cancel out because AARP endorses health care reform, I say fuck 'em and good riddance. A lot of old people are just plain embarrassing, and I'm not sure why their petulance is newsworthy.

Reuniting

There's nothing like a class reunion to focus one's attention on the passage of time. This weekend, my high school class held its 45th anniversary reunion, and I decided to attend the first of three events, the one with the smallest cover charge.

My high school years are largely memorable for a lot of heartache and pain. I skipped most of first grade, so for the remainder of my education in public school plus college, I was 6-12 months younger than nearly all my classmates. This wasn't terribly significant by the time I reached my sophomore year in college, but during grades 3 through 9, it was a major factor in my life since my maturity level always lagged behind that of most boys I knew at school. I was still interested in playing cowboys while they were moving on to organized youth baseball and girls. There were younger boys in my neighborhood that shared my interests, but eventually I outgrew them just as my classmates at school were outgrowing me. And so it was that by the time I reached high school, I was fairly isolated and had only one close friend. I was too young to drive and too shy to approach girls for dates. In short, I was too immature to live comfortably in the world I occupied.

There are things I remember about high school. I remember frequent struggles with algebra. I enjoyed trigonometry and could handle geometry, but high school algebra ate my lunch. The same was true at the collegiate level. Thank God my survival never depended on being able to apply principles of algebraic mathematics. I remember doing well in English, and developing the interest in writing now manifested in blogging. I remember P.E. classes and one incident in which a future Republican voter pissed on my leg in the shower. Literally.

One result of being younger than my classmates was that there was no shortage of older boys wanting to fight with me. Consequently, I spent recesses and lunch periods maintaining the lowest possible profile until I could return to the relatively safe classroom environment.

By the time I was old enough to be interested in girls, I'd experienced enough rejection to understand how to avoid it. Rather than ask for dates I'd simply worship certain girls from a distance, and at home, lie on my bed deep in romantic fantasies. I'd memorize lyrics to sad ballads I heard on the radio, like "Blue On Blue" by Bobby Vinton, because they captured my mood so effectively. In junior high I developed a temporary crush on a girl because during a class in square dancing, I was her partner and was dazzled by how soft and warm she was. Any girl who smiled at me or spoke a kind word became the object of a brief crush which could be prolonged by another smile or kind word.

The condensed version -- heartache and pain, heartache and pain. The greatest revelation of my freshman year in college was that the real world was nothing like high school. Compared with high school, the upperclassmen in my outfit at TAMU were grown men, some with wives and children. As adolescence ended, I discovered I was playing on an even field with my classmates. It was as if a bright light came on, and I began to consider my high school years, in retrospect, as a period of pointless suffering.

I didn't attend a high school reunion until the 25th, and then only because I was urged into it by the guy who'd been my best friend from grades 7 through 12 (mentioned earlier). I hadn't known many people in high school and had no particular use for some I did know, but thought it might be cool to see how girls I'd adored then looked now, in their early forties.

As it turned out, I surprised myself by enjoying the reunion. I talked to several classmates whose experiences with insecurity and fear of rejection weren't too different from mine. I realized that what I'd considered my unique despair was probably something most teenagers go through in some form or other. I had conversations with some of the women I had adored in the 1960s, which provided an opportunity to confess my crushes. Oh, to have had the self-confidence then that I had now...

For various reasons, I missed most of the reunions following the 25th, and another twenty years flew by. The woman who'd been student body secretary our senior year called me to see if I had any updated information about classmates, and persuaded me to join at least one of the events at the upcoming 45th. A few days ago, she e-mailed a newsletter listing the names of classmates who promised to attend, and I prepared by pulling out my wife's 1964 yearbook (her sophomore year, my senior) and matching names in the letter with yearbook photographs.

Friday night arrived, and I saw people I hadn't seen since 1989, or 1964 in several cases. Some had held up under the burden of years better than others, but everyone looked like someone who could be some youngster's grandparent. Many probably were. My first conversation of the evening was with a man who had spent some of his time in the 1960s arranging lunch hour fights for me with other boys who weren't part of the in-crowd. Eventually I found a quiet spot from which I could observe the comings and goings. I saw a few of my crushes, now in their 60s, and killed time wondering how life might've worked out if I'd mustered the courage to ask them for dates. I'll never know.

Kids, through old eyes

My children have started producing grandsons with some degree of frequency, which causes me to think about the passage of time in my own life and the lives that lie ahead for the three young males added to the clan in recent years. Our newest grandson rolled off the assembly line in the past week, joining his two cousins.

Mrs. bee is spending a few days this week with R and A and their newborn, while I tend the home fires. In addition to contemplating aging, change, children, and other mysteries of life, I've had a few hours to watch movies I've been wanting to see. Each time I load a DVD, I'm amazed by the technological changes occurring in the span it took my children to progress from being kids to having kids.

Last night, I finally watched Into The Wild, a movie that's been on my must-see list for more than a year. It was written and directed by Sean Penn, based on a non-fiction book by that title about a young man named Christopher McCandless, his decisions, and their consequences. This turned out to be a film that blended into my preoccupation this week with youngsters and transformation.

I've been a young man in my time, and I've known many other young men, so I can speak with some authority on the types of situations young men often get into as a result of their disinterest in caution and taking time to think things through. Chris, the young man portrayed in Into The Wild, is highly intelligent and idealistic and has traces of a reckless streak, a combination of characteristics that lead him to abandon his life of privilege for what he believes will be the freedom of life lived at its most fundamental level. As the title suggests, he winds up in the Alaskan wilderness, unburdened by the conveniences of civilization.

Sean Penn did some excellent work putting Into The Wild together, and this is a movie worth seeing more than once. I was impressed by its photography and the performances of its supporting cast members, particularly Hal Holbrook's as an older man whose wise advice Chris disregards. The Holbrook character is one I can relate to in a film examining American ways of life that are foreign to me. At roughly 148 minutes, Into The Wild is long but held my interest all the way. From my perspective as a grandpa, I'll recommend this as a movie every dad should see while his sons are young. Penn didn't intend his film as a cautionary tale, but it worked out to be like one for me.