I think this here is a conversation everybody takes a part of at some point in their life.

“I like the image of Jesus.  Really comfortable clothing.  Good Sandals.  Leads to wisdom.”

“Yeah, Jesus is cool.  Good miracles.  Loaves into bread, and etc.  There is part of the message I don’t like.  The meek shall inherit the Earth?  Haven’t seen that happen.”

“Maybe the meek inherited the Earth, but the Strong just took it back from them.”

“I think the meek inherited the Earth, than simply became the enemy they once despised.  Also, Moses… He parted the Red Sea.”

“Yeah, but that’s not that impressive.  The more impressive part is parting it back up right when the Pharoa’s army crosses.”

“I saw a movie once.  It looked pretty good.  But I think Moses ended up becoming this cranky gun nut.”
……………………………………….

A game to play might be to figure out which lines from that were mine.  Another game is to sort through your mind and recall the discussion you participated in which most closely matches that batch of talk, or to see if you end up in the exact same lines.  I note that the observation from sandals, slightly tweaked, was posited from Cliff Clavin on Cheers.  Human interaction is an interesting thing (I say as though I am a Robotic Mass puzzled over such a concept), in that you are compelled to say something, and thus you do.

Although that conversation is probably in some ways as ubiquitious, in the correct scheme of things, somewhere in the next 60 years I am likely to find myself dissecting it with a group in people in that matter.

I saw a bumper sticker which read:

“Support the Troops
Find the War”

The message confused me.  Until I realized that the bumper sticker was cut off at the bottom as the window bent out of site.  It would read “End the War”.  Still, “Find the War” brings with it a bit more unease, which may be something someone prone to use bumper stickers may want.
I regularly see a particular car with this other bumper sticker, which is interesting enough sitting next to another bumper sticker.  The bumper stickers are from the Ron Saxton campaign for governor in 2006 in his unsuccessful campaign against incumbent Ted Kulongoski.  So we have one saying “Where’s Ted?” and another with the “Ron Saxton for Governor” or something to that effect.  I really want to tap the shoulder of whoever owns this car and reply “Ted is in the Governor’s Mansion.  Now, where’s Ron?”

I saw, posted to a side wall of Fred Meyers, a note saying to the effect of:

Need some Drug Free Urine?
Call (phone #)
We’ll hook You Up!

I am fairly positive that when I go to Fred Meyers again tomorrow this slip of paper will be taken down.  I suppose there is a market for drug free urine, and it is a type of thing you cannot promote in the Yellow Pages, so you have to reach that market somehow or other.

………………………

I’ve noticed this ad placement at Yahoo.  I’m weary of posting the image to the ad, though you more than likely have seen it and passed by without a second’s thought.  I guess I’ll just shrug and say “Well… Free advertisement for that company!”

The thing about that question is that I really don’t know who is searching for me, but I really doubt that it is the woman pictured.

At least it is somewhat better than this one ad for some other internet company I won’t name which showed a woman in her bed waving her fingers to come toward her.

There was a parade through Downtown Portland today.  It was pretty gay.

……………….

Random news report: “Rougly 5 protesters.”  I don’t understand.  I suppose we could have anywhere between 3 and 7 at any particular time, but when it is in the one digits, can’t we just hand count them and lay off the “rough estimates”?

I watched a procession of protesters streaming across Pioneer Courthouse Square, chanting something like “Hemp NOW! NOW Hemp!”, and singing something like “We like hemp, yes we do.”

Standing at the corner, yelling into this mix, was a small group of Christian fundamentalists. I think they were yelling a chant akin to “You will burn in Hell! Jesus Saves! Ezekial 3:17!”

All of this was, perhaps, par for the course. I saw a sign that suggested it was part of the “Million Hemp March”, a joke if there ever was one considering the size of the crowd — large, I suppose, so far as these things go. But what I couldn’t figure out for the life of me…

At the end of the procession, there was what appeared to be a dragon. Why?

Have you ever seen a stranger give you the stink eye?  As a repsonse, have you ever given the stink eye right back, largely to cover your bases as you try to figure out who he is and what the genesis of this conflict is?  After a few seconds, you then withdraw the stink eye and get back to whatever business or pleasure or boredom you are attending to, as per not coming up with any answers as to why this stranger is giving you the stink eye or why you should care.

What if you meet up with him again?  What if this time he asks, point-blank “Why were you giving me the stink eye just then?”  I imagine my answer to be a bunch of stammering, with “You did it first!”

The conflict can escalate or de-escalate from there depending on a number of factors that seem only assigned to the fates.

I couldn’t find myself anything to do on New Years’ Eve.  Honestly, my preference runs to something like watching part of the Twilight Zone marathon run every New Years’ Eve and every July 4th on the Sci-Fi network — alone or with a group of sympaticos — which I have done in the past,  and probably will in the future.

I rode from one corner of Portland to another, seeing if such and such a place were open and if such and such another place were open.  Neither were.  At one point in the Tri-Met ride, I looked around and saw that I really had a strong dislike for everybody in my sight.  It was a panoply of hipsters, and a bit of bathroom graffiti struck out at me “Hipster Culture will be shown to be just as vacuuous as Disco was”.  There was a group that especially annoyed me — and one person in the group who did so even more.  It was a studied and carefully crafted geek chic and a strange “too cool for school” pose from a young lad just slightly than I… I don’t know quite how to describe it, and am at a loss of what disparate cultural cues shoved into a blender brings this person to the point he was at that precise moment.
At a different point in time, and with a completely different crowd — one that I liked better, and one that allowed me to shrug the other crowd off and inwardly figure “Well.  Leave them to their fun and I hope they enjoy themselves”–, two slightly high and slightly drunk gay men pointed at about three men in their sight, saying “Hot”.  I am happy to say that I am Hot.  Two people wearing the typical Fare Inspector uniform, but clearly with other duties this day being a “Fare Free New Years”, walked in.  They jotted notes in a notebook, frantically scanning the scene.  This again brought me to a state of annoyment.  Either you see something or you don’t… there is no notetaking for reference.  I am sure they had a mental list of items to take note of.  Interestingly enough, one of them said something to one of the gay men — who immediately obeyed by tossing his cigarette (or was it a joint?  No.  Couldn’t have been.) out the fast-closing door.  A seat immediately opened up, which I jumped at to sit in.  I saw why it was free… there was three beer cans.  I, having had bad experience sitting next to empty beer cans, shoved it out of my seat — contemplating for a second waving at the quasi – authority figures to say “Not Mine!”
I couldn’t figure out what could possibly be happening at Pioneer Square.  Sometimes it is cordored off on New Years’ Eve; sometimes it is not.  It wasn’t this time.  There was a decent sized but not overwhelming number of citizens milling about… I would later learn that one of them was Daniel Lee, all the more reason to have avoided the spot.  The next day I saw that a ball of some sort had been broken into pieces, and silver metal specks were all under the large Christmas Tree.  More power to that.
The rest of the night was all a blur, and just as well that it was.

“My siblings hate me because they’re all liberal Democrats and I’m a conservative Independent.”
“Hm. That doesn’t make sense. You kind of just have to put that aside. ‘Politics stops at the kitchen table’, as they say. There are more and other important things in life.”
“Not to them. Actually what pisses them off is that I have a photograph of me, like at the age of 4, meeting John F Kennedy — their hero. I could care less about him and that I met him, and yet I shook his hand. They never did.”
“Weird. Jealousy.”

A bumper sticker I saw yesterday:

“US OUT OF CASCADIA!!”

Shrug.

“Gawd, this is embarrassing. This is Faggot’s Day. And they do it on Father’s Day. I’m a dad. Why do they have to do it on Father’s Day?”

He’s referring to today’s Gay Pride Parade, and auxiliary run-abouts around town. The answer to this stranger’s question is, I suppose, it fits into the Gay Agenda’s (or, wait. I’m sorry. “Faggot Agenda”) plot to secure special rights and flout their immoral lifestyle choice in front of all of decent red-blooded Americans like himself.

Portland is degenerating into a wild array of special interest tribes. If today is — um, in the phrase of the man I lead with “Faggot’s Day” — last week was “Suburbanite Week” in Portland, otherwise known as “Rose Festival”. I did a double take when I saw the front-page headline for the Portland Tribune, and laughed reading a news article probing the question But in between the time Portlanders are children and have their own families, the Rose Festival loses them. The organizers’ own research has shown that between the ages of 18 and 34, most people have something better to do.

I try to divert my eyes at this time. Some Suburban family marks a space on the sidewalk with duct tape for prime seating space for some parade or other, a parade replete with marching bands and the finalists for some high school “queen” of some sort or other. Some rides show up on Waterfront Park, and I hear you can buy some cotton candy therein. In theory this festival has started to lose money in recent years, and thus that’s why the Portland Tribune implores why the Yute of Portland are not showing up for the festivities. But itt’s probably worth the loss, in that it boosts Portland’s Brand Image. To ask why I’m not taking part in any of this is silly and absurd. It reminds me of skipping out on high school pep rallies, which occasionally received a scornful “Why are these students walking away from our pep rallies?” from school officials and semi-officials, and I’m guessing Portland’s 18 to 34 set is full of people who in high school skipped out on pep rallies. (Also hilarious is this letter to the editor decrying the Rose Festival’s growing “commercialism”.)

But there is a tip for future marketers: The pirate ship that docked in Portland was used in the creation of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. It was also used as the backdrop of a recent porn movie. A tour of the ship that points out key plot points of both movies might get a slice of that 18 to 34 demographic — I don’t know if it’s the slice you are hankering for, but take it for what it’s worth. At any rate, it’s an opportunity lost.

Speaking of Pirates, yesterday was Pirate Day. Portland, Oregon was overrun with Pirates. Portland’s Infernal Order of Pirates had a Plunderathon, an annual event I believe. And thus there wre Pirates. I don’t know what to say about that.

I guess more seriously tied to anything is that there’s the Juneteenth festival in North Portland. I walked by that fenced in area, never walking through it, unsure as to what it was. I congratulate Ron Saxton on his efforts to greet potential voters at… Juneteenth.

Though the Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect on January 1, 1863, it had little immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in Texas, which was almost entirely under Confederate control. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived on Galveston Island to take possession of the state and enforce slaves’ new freedoms. Standing on the balcony of Galveston’s Ashton Villa, Granger read the contents of “General Order No. 3”:

Slaves in Galveston rejoiced in the streets with jubilant celebrations. Juneteenth celebrations began in Texas the following year. Across many parts of Texas, freed slaves pooled their funds to purchase land specifically for their communities’ increasingly large Juneteenth gatherings — including Houston’s Emancipation Park, Mexia’s Booker T. Washington Park, and Emancipation Park in Austin. Within a few years, these celebrations had spread to other states and become an annual tradition. Celebrations often opened with praying and religious ceremonies, and included a reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. A wide range of festivities entertained participants, from music and dancing to contests of physical strength and intellect. Baseball and other popular American games were played. Food was central to the celebrations, and barbecued meats were especially popular.

So, with Pirates, Gay parades, and a celebration of the end of slavery abounding — not to mention Father’s Day — off the heels of a festival for our Suburban breathern — there’s plenty worth noting. None of too much interest to the man I mentioned at the top here, but I can probably find a Klan rally for him to sit in on.