As in, I do not care.

I’ve had to work a few Plaza art fairs and–for the most part–knock on wood–as far as we are concerned they are relatively quiet things. You can’t drive into the Plaza, and you can’t get out of the Plaza, not without extraordinary difficulty. Biking out yesterday afternoon took an additional ten minutes, because you could get across streets or through intersections, and traffic south of the Plaza through upper Brookside was appalling.

In a real sense this impenetrability is almost as real a hindrance to the usual weekend crowd as an ice storm or a foot of snow–perhaps more so. The weekend crowd are an independent lot in their helplessness, and the human factor might be more daunting, or at least more irritating, than a force of nature.

The art is daunting enough.  In the long ago time, when I was just a lad, it was mostly not a commercial enterprise, the domain of artists who travel from city to city and art festival to art festival, but a place where local artists, for the largest part, showed their work. Such is not the case now. Another thing that has changed in the past four decades is that it is not, in reality, a family-friendly environment. The last dozen years or so has shown a spike in alcohol consumption and public drunkenness. I wouldn’t go down there on a bet.

A part, I suppose, of the coarsening of society and the collapse, if I can call it that, of social standards, when the toniest district in this little city can turn into an open bar under the aegis of an “arts” event.

It’s nothing, of course, to the 3 a.m. gunfights and liquored-up brawling that I had to endure living on the Plaza when the STD-laden bars let out . . . that was something else that changed after about 1994.

What have we wrought?

Bird butt, originally uploaded by sparrowsfall.

Check out what my pook is up to over at birdparty.

Is there any reason that the Chiefs should be down 6-0 against the Raiders at Arrowhead at the end of the second quarter?

No. There is not.

Edit 3:18 pm–Unless we were planning to lose.

Unlike last time, I’ve pretty much stayed out of the stupid election circus, but I really have to say I think that once again, the Democrats are taking a pretty sure thing and blowing it.

Exhibit A: even if Obama had a lead, would he have a lead?

Exhibit B: out of the British media, word that a senior Democratic stratgist thinks Obama’s people

are on the verge of blowing the greatest gimme in the history of American politics. They’re the most arrogant bunch I[’]ve ever seen. They won’t accept that they are losing and they won’t listen.

I mean, seriously, seven years of war, economic muddling, natural disaster, and growing international isolation and discontent, and Obama is behind to a man rather closely tied to Bush? One woman from Alaska can’t be the cause of all this.
Of course, my personal stance that whoever is elected President, they will face problems* of such a vast magnitude** that it won’t matter whether they are -R or -D. But what do I know.

___________________

*In which case we had better be drilling in Alaska.

**In which case drilling in Alaska could make things worse.

A long time indeed. Maybe over five years. I used to do this all the time on Livejournal, all those long and wasted Saturday mornings . . . here at the Place That Must Not Be Named.

 A wild, rainy night, tornados popping up all over the region. Apparently the Place had to shut down for forty-five minutes because of the sirens. I’m not sure whether or not it was a full bown funnel cloud or not, but there you go.

So the concept is this: I have been self-published in the comix, for the most part, since 1996. The work is adaptable to children’s literature, once all the smoking, drinking, and political references are removed. But due to the vagaries of the market, I can’t imagine anyone actually publishing it. Lord knows people are particular about what they want to invest their company’s money in. Why would it be me?

However–a small local store might sell a hand-made hardbound book by a local author . . . . . .

Part of the rough draft of the children’s book I am writing.

Why am I doing this? I had a dream about a book a lot like Night At The Museum. I woke up thinking, I could do this. Then I thought, I would never get published.

Then I remembered the Reading Reptile.