Shoulders for pillows, lay down your head and dream

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
H. L. Mencken




Conservatives don't know what to do with me, by every measure, I should be one of them. My career background, my ethnic background, my upbringing, even my unpleasant nature means I should be one of them. I'm not a latte leftist, I don't even like lattes, make my coffee strong and black.

I harbour little patience for fools. This has meant that I have very few allies on the right wing or the left wing. I do have respect for opponents I disagree with, which puzzles them even more. I don't easily degenerate into insulting matches with people I disagree with. Far too easily, people on the left hurl around the word facist. This has diminished the power of that word. When Bush is called a facist now, the middle centre, rolls it's eyes, "oh, another one". I agree with them, for far too long anyone slightly right of centre has been called a facist.

I respect people with strong religious beliefs, as long as they do not try to enforce those principles they hold dear on me. I've always tried to confront the debates with the right with logic, which confounds them. A number of my friends in the US have written to me expressing their dismay over same sex marriage. I've asked them, "why do you care?" if you're not gay, it's not any of your concern. The concern is that their church might be forced to sanctify ceremonies they don't agree with. Not so up here I counter, if a church doesn't want to perform a wedding between two people, it doesn't have to, no argument.

People wonder why I write this journal at the strange times I do, simply because this is when my thought process is the cleanest. I'm free of the mind corruption that the day brings. I can gaze at the azure skies out the window and almost feel optimistic. As the day progresses and the feeds burn during the day, my thoughts become increasingly pessimistic. Maybe it's the laboured breathing from all the cigarettes or the diminishing enthusiasm of the coffee, but I become more and more spiritually tired as the day wears on, a flak jacket of humour is the only thing that allows me to make it to the next appointment with the big empty mattress.