Partial Transmissions

I hadn't actually heard the audio of Rick Sanchez's radio rant about Jon Stewart and Jews when I posted about it a couple days ago, and when I did finally hear it, it seemed to me Sanchez' words were more ill-considered than truly anti-Semitic. It was the simple minded logic, "Jews can't be an oppressed minority because there are successful Jews." And I think when he called Stewart a bigot, the word he was really looking for was biased--and the group he sensed Stewart's bias against--dull, poorly considered blowhards in the news media--was misidentified by Sanchez as being . . . people who grew up poor, I think, I'm still not quite sure. So I rather like this video, the kind of civility and grace Stewart exhibits on the issue provides an example more people in the news media ought to provide.

I was feeling good about winning a chess game last, but afterwards I checked my e-mail and found that Moira had unfriended me on Live Journal with no explanation. I still feel slightly like I've been punched in the nose, and I've been thinking about it ever since, trying to sort out why I'm upset and whether I have any right to be upset. I haven't really been wondering too much why she unfriended me, though I don't know. There are just too many possibilities--she has at least two people still on her friends list who hate me intensely, at least one of whom thinks I'm an outright misogynist, and both of whom are relatively influential voices in circles Moi prefers to frequent. Also there's a kind of normalcy about this--it sort of reminded me of when Chris unfriended me without explanation. He eventually e-mailed me to explain that he didn't like the general tone of my blog anymore and that he found himself wanting to make fun of me and wasn't proud of it. It got me thinking about how I might have changed over the past year, but I still feel basically the same. I don't really see much difference between my posts now and when Chris acted like he really liked me. But obviously it could easily be something I'm too close to see, and whatever it is could also be the reason Moi unfriended me. There's also the fact that I hadn't commented on Moi's journal in several months, despite the fact that her cat was having medical problems, and I didn't donate money when she put up a donate button for her cat's medical bills, even though I usually donate whenever Moi puts up the button. Which is not to say I think Moi expects money for her friendship, but it might have seemed to her symptomatic of a general loss of interest on my part. The fact is, I generally don't like commenting on other people's journals for some reason. I certainly don't have time to keep up with all of them all the time, I spend most of the day working on my comic or running errands.

I suppose I could e-mail Moira directly and ask her, but it seemed to me that if I did get an answer, it'd just be depressing, and the fact that she didn't talk to me to begin with would indicate she didn't want to.

So mainly I've been thinking about whether or not I have any right to be upset. I don't consider everyone on my friends list friends--I just "friended" the journal of someone who posts only in Russian because I like the photographs he or she posts. I think Twitter's use of the word "follow" is far more apt. But when someone who's acted like a friend to me for more than ten years, with whom I've had long conversations and exchanged words of comfort in different crises, I do feel sort of justified in being hurt when being sort of coldly cut like that. But it doesn't seem to be something a lot of people online consider strange. People go through their social networks pruning people out of their lives all the time, and maybe it's an implicitly understood benefit of Internet society to a lot of people that exchanges of ideas and sympathies occur without conferring any form of meaningful connexions between individuals. Though honestly I've encountered plenty of that in "real life".

Oh, well. I guess this is just something else I have to suck up.

Twitter Sonnet #189

Gutsy questions demand colon answers.
Hash brown disaster is now immanent.
Rum makes spongy the skins of dinosaurs.
Twenty dollar puppets aren't permanent.
Rain washes the whiskey to second street.
Jonah missiles sprout from the fish canon.
Ribs bash barbeque sauce to a red beat.
River gullets take torrents of salmon.
Heroic grog obliterated rust.
Liquid spaz monster coloured the rain drops.
Post modern poltergeists painted the dust.
Final Santa's bag's but barley and hops.
Grey and living film fades a Union blue.
Flammable puddles under a white shoe.