The Recreational Nihilist Articles

I am not a sporty guy. Truly. I like hiking, and bicycling, and camping – you know, physical outdoorsy stuff. But sports? Nuh-uh. Oh, sure, I like watching the Olympics, and basketball has a certain appeal to me. But again: sports? Not on the top of my list. I did swim competitively for about three years, though, when I was a kid. The first year was great. Our coach was a swell lady who really focused on proper swimming form, a focus that made swim meets that much more fun. But she left to become a nun in the middle of nowhere, Québec, and year two brought along a wishy-washy coach. Nice guy, but wishy-washy…And then came year three, with a coach focused on winning, winning, winning. The fun got sucked out of the swimming, the competitiveness became oppressive, and suddenly, there was no good justification for getting up at 5:30 on Saturday mornings for swim practice in freezing water. So much for athleticism.

Ranking right up there with the semi-imaginary stereotype of the angry liberal is, of course, none other than our friend the angry atheist. Oh, yes. Him. With the sneering visage and clenched fists. With the sarcasm and disdain towards all things religious. Why IS he so angry?

As my wife and I prepared for a family Thanksgiving gathering at our home, we had the TV set to the Macy’s parade. Big balloons, floats, marching bands; the whole shebang. At some point, a modestly sized float came into view, a large urban landscape crowning a giant apple. But it wasn’t the float itself that took my attention away from some last-minute cleaning-up. It was the commentator announcing the float with something more or less along the lines of “and here’s the float for New York City, the greatest city in the world.” My first reaction: Sorry, but New York is not the greatest city in the world. My second reaction: What is this obsession with being “the greatest?”

Okay, so who am I to talk strategy? My attempt at activism, the Always Choose Love Initiative, didn’t quite go according to plan. Maybe the tee-shirts were too expensive. Maybe tee-shirts in general didn’t suit people’s fancy. I definitely should have had buttons and stickers. (I do now, but more on that later.) At the very least, I don’t have Obama’s capacity to inspire. But having frankly admitted my limitations, I still don’t quite agree with the current strategy underlying Prop. 8 opposition. At the very least, I’m sitting on the fence.

Although I’m not convinced that the protests serve a strategically useful purpose – and I wonder where the heck everybody was before Nov. 4 – I don’t buy accusations (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/) that these are mob justice or disrespectful of “the people’s will.” Insofar as the mob justice canard is concerned, Prop. 8 not only revoked a legal right, it did so on the basis of portraying gay marriage as harmful to children and a threat to social stability. When somebody calls you a threat, immoral and the like, then pulls a stunt like Prop. 8 to interfere in your life, getting upset and exercising free speech rights strikes me as a natural human response. Prop. 8 supporters may not like being the object of anger, they may not like being called intolerant and bigots, they may not like these protests and boycotts, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise. People don’t like to be insulted and treated like second-class citizens, and it was, after all, the Prop. 8 people – who don’t seem to understand or care about the pain they are causing – who started it. They could have left well enough alone, living their lives according to their beliefs and leaving others to theirs, but no.

Okay, so the headline isn’t, strictly speaking, true. I am plenty pleased that Obama won. President Bush and the GOP had eight years of governance, they botched it, and now comes someone new. Obama brought to the campaign a better set of policies and, more importantly, a superior vision and temperament than McCain. That Obama inspired so many to become involved in the political process is commendable. That the world is jubilant about Obama’s win and looking forward to renewing diplomatic relations that frayed under President Bush is encouraging. And, except for the hardcore Republican base who see Obama’s win as the Russian Revolution and will continue to see it that way no matter what, Obama stands a good chance of truly achieving a government that doesn’t shut people out the way Republicans have shut out Democrats and dissenters in the past eight years.

I had plans for a high-powered column this week. Something on the metaphysics of voting. Or another call to please, please vote against the unfair, wrong Prop. 8, which is promoted with infuriating lies and distortions by the measure’s supporters. Or maybe some general thoughts on the propositions – how 4 needs to be rejected because it will harm, not help teenagers; how 2, which would ensure humane treatment to animals, deserves a yes; and how 5 will help reform the justice system, not destroy it.

One proposition would require parents or families to be notified when a teenager seeks to get an abortion. The other would throw love under the bus and ban same-sex couples from marrying. Two different propositions, but one underlying issue.

I’ll be upfront. I am not a native son of California, and my arrival here was not the result of me waking up one morning, stuffed with visions of sun, surf and bikinis, and saying, “I’m packin’ up and movin’ to California, eh.” Nope; while I obviously made a conscious decision to move here, my coming to the Golden State, instead of another state, was largely the product of circumstance.

The first time I was mortally offended while going out, I was 10 (give or take). It was an upscale restaurant in Old Montreal, an establishment called Chez Queue that is amazingly still there, and I had ordered a dessert of strawberries and vanilla ice cream. Only, I didn’t like vanilla at the time. So I asked for chocolate ice cream instead. The waiter pulled a face, a disgusted face, as if I had ordered the strawberries with relish and hot sauce or something equally weird. I was outraged. My parents were far from impressed, and we never went back. Oh, I look back and laugh now. But the incident, and the sheer absurd insult of it all, is the defining memory I have of that place.
And that is pretty much how I feel about a recent experience at the Edison bar.