Bedtime

It's 10:58 right now and chances are it will be even later when I finish writing this, which means it's about to be fucking bedtime. (Please follow that link. I recommend Wizard Bobo's Castle, which is such a satisfying and comforting tale that I've printed it out on cardstock and plan to read it every night for the rest of my life.)

I hate bedtime -- always have, always will. I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to shut down. I want to stay up and have some fun. I don't care if it's shaped like a hamburger or Gerald Ford, I don't want to go to bed.

I have pretty much the exact same emotional reaction to bedtime now as when I was eleven. Every night, my mom, stepdad and I would watch Channel 5 local news at 10 PM, all strangely beige sets and Arkansas-white faces chattering away about absolutely nothing. Then my stepdad would lumber out of his recliner and head to the shower, shirtless and scratching his bulbous belly, and I'd stay up with my mom for the nightly syndicated Seinfeld rerun, which for much of my pre-adolescent youth was the most exciting event of my day. Thrilling as Elaine and Jerry were, though, they'd be powerless to slow the pendulum's approach. Bedtime was waiting, and during the commercials I'd shoot glances at the clock in the kitchen inching towards 11 PM. And then the zany plot lines would resolve, the closing riff would sound (da da da DUH!) and there I'd be.

I was never one to beg or plead to stay up later or even to hide a damn flashlight under the covers, let alone sneak out a window,. Such things would be impossible to contemplate at that point in my development. Had I thought about it, I wouldn't have had any idea how I'd even begin to break a rule. This was my childhood M.O. -- dutifully resigned, fearful of disapproval from any and everyone, not wanting to put anyone out. 

As for the present, well, now that I'm an Adult, I obviously can't stay up too late. I'd run the risk of being too tired in the morning to do my job. Efficiency might not be maximized. Someone might get upset or be disappointed. Bedtime is for the best.

Good night!

Ugly

Last Friday, there was a fight at school at the end of lunch, a horrible sweating screaming affair in the foyer of the school immediately adjacent to the cafeteria. Although my office is only about fifteen yards away, I was late getting to the scene because of the mob of bystanders (other students) blocking the entranceway with their staring and laughing and jeering and cheering. "Mob" is the appropriate word here, because a fight brings out the worst possible side of students, the bloodthirsty voyeur. Some will try to help (one girl ran to tell me it was happening), some will flee the scene, but the majority will press around and watch. Violence and curiosity evaporates empathy evaporates in a second. Can you blame them?

Such obscene rubbernecking always happens during a fight, although it was much worse than usual this time because it happened in a central location in the busiest time of the day: prime time viewing, fightwise. By the time I squeezed my way through the crowd, the two girls who'd been punching each other in the face were separated, hair sticking in all directions, dazed on their feet, adrenaline and fear and rage jangling their faces into nasty masks. One was still being restrained by teachers as she shouted belligerent things, the profane threats she was yelling rendered tinny and incomprehensible by the roaring of the crowd.

Fights aren't an everyday thing at our school, but they're not exactly rare either. They usually involve two girls and they're always fucking stupid. Although the school administrators investigate such an incident with plenty of interviews and eyewitness statements in an attempt to apportion blame and premeditation, it's a little pointless to try to unravel a meaning to such a fight. Whatever the she-said-this-she-did-that causality of the gossip and sniping leading up to the event, the facts always boil down to some escalating series of perceived social slights. In this case, the two girls involved are both good, kind, hardworking students, kids who return lost items found in the bathroom and help other students with their homework, kids capable of introspection and critical thinking. For one of them, it's her third fight so far this year and she's up for expulsion.

I think every Tuesday is a Super Tuesday

At first I told myself I was rooting for Gingrich or Santorum to win primary contests because they'd be easier to beat in the general election than Romney. Yeah, yeah, whatever. I guess that's true, but they're not going to happen and everyone knows it. (Plus, I don't want them to, because one is a fanatic for an evil cause and the other is a mercenary ogre.)

Then I told myself that I wanted the primary to drag itself out so that Romney would be "weakened" come convention time, whatever that means. I don't know anything about conventions or the intraparty process, but I really doubt commentators are talking about much of anything when they say a candidate is "weakened". They mean something like this, I suppose? Like Romney'll be out of mana to spend in August if he goes all in to obliterate the sweater vest kobolds this early in the dungeon? I don't buy it. Mana replenishes fast, everybody knows that.

No, the fact is that I really want it to keep going for the same reason that people love Quentin Tarrentino movies: because it's just so viscerally entertaining to watch a group of cardboard bad people enact their violent animosities upon one another. Please keep it going.