Well, greetings, everyone, from the sleepy St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, where I have recently arrived for the purpose of celebrating Thanksgiving with my family. I'm going to be here for the next eight days, in fact, which will hopefully mean not only regular updates from me that entire time, but also (with any luck) a bunch of work getting done on my site itself, including the importation finally of some of my archived journal entries (1999's, to be specific, from the first year this journal was around), as well as fixing some of the display issues that continue to haunt all you users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

It's been weird visiting St. Charles over the last five years, to tell you the truth, because the Bush Era has had a pretty bad effect on it; I mean, this has always been a conservative area of the country to begin with, which is what led me to leaving at the end of high school and never moving back, but something about the Bush administration has just changed things here for the worse. Anywhere in St. Charles you go anymore, you see the signs all around: billboards for anti-choice groups on every highway; bitter, violent bumper stickers on the back of every SUV (and they're all SUVs here), talking about how all liberals should be rounded up and shot. The Bush Years have turned my childhood home into a meaner, more judgmental, much more fascist place than it ever was when I was growing up here; and every time I've been back since Septmeber 11th, I grow just a little bit more alarmed by it all, and a little more pessimistic myself.

I suppose we lefties are spoiled up in Chicago, one of the last bastions of liberal rule left in the entire United States these days. And I suppose I take this liberal-friendliness in Chicago for granted sometimes, just like many other leftists in Chicago do, until traveling someplace like St. Charles again and being reminded of what a huge section of the rest of this country is like these days, and just how unusual it is anymore to be a liberal in America and not just get bombarded with shit and violent threats from every direction, 24 hours a day.

Is this what my country has really come to? I can't be in St. Charles anymore without thinking a lot about fundamentalist terrorists, and how what I see here in this small Missouri town is concrete proof that these terrorists are winning the war. See, if you break it down, what Islamic fundamentalists really want, more than anything else, is for the world to be run in a fundamentalist way; for people with dissenting opinions to not have a voice, for not all members of a society to have equal status, for there to be no freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc. So when I look at a place like St. Charles anymore, I can't help but to think how damn successful the terrorists have been at achieving their aims; that at least in this city, and I'm sure many many others in the US, fundamentalist terrorism has led to other fundamentalists gaining power, and the general populace supporting this fundamentalism. So suddenly, right here in the middle of the midwest, you have exactly what the terrorists wanted in the first place - a quashing of civil rights, ridicule and violent responses to dissenting opinion, serious restrictions now in place regarding the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc. (I mean, sure, the fundamentalists here are Christian and not Islamic; but a fascist is a fascist, as far as I'm concerned, no matter which made-up god they choose to worship.)

This all just seems so obvious to me, and it alarms me when I'm in a place like St. Charles and am surrounded by people who can't see this themselves; people who sincerely believe, for example, that they're actually supporting democracy by shouting down opinions they don't agree with, people who sincerely believe that they're fighting fascism by being fascists themselves. It helps me much more profoundly understand why something like the Nazi years in Germany could've happened, which of course regular readers know is a long-time obsession of mine; of how an entire nation of otherwise sane, normal people, people who were even considered liberal just ten years previously, could eventually turn into such a bloodthirsty, amoral society, one where humiliation, torture and the refusal of acknowledging basic human dignity is the norm.

And the answer, unfortunately, is much more simple than I ever thought it could be, as evidenced here in America over the last couple of years; basically, because most human beings on the planet at any given moment are stupid, weak, unthinking sheep, and will happily go along with any crazy-ass thing any person in any position of authority tells them, because it allows them to avoid having to think for themselves. And really, that's it - when you really look at what's been going on here in America the last five years, it really does ultimately boil down to the simple fact that most human beings are morons. And I can't even tell you how much I wish the answer was different, or more complex - that it had to do with national culture, or of being at a specific point in history. But every time I'm in St. Charles, I'm reminded again that this is simply not the truth; that the majority of bad things happening in this country these days simply boils down to the fact that most people just go along with whatever their superiors tell them, without even considering the idea of questioning it.

So that kind of sucks, because visiting St. Charles now for me is always a bit of a depressing and frustrating experience, even as spending time with my family is really nice and makes me happy. And it reminds me as well of just how badly most left-leaning Americans have it these days, out there in all those cities that aren't Chicago and San Francisco and those other small bastions of liberalism that are left here. And I don't really have much more of a point than this - it's just something I think about, is all, whenever I'm down here in St. Charles these days.

Okay, so, well, anyway. Anyway, it is definitely nice to spend a little time with my family again, as it always is; and it's especially nice to see that my mom is continuing to heal nicely from her hip-replacement surgery earlier this year. (Regular readers will of course remember that I was in St. Charles just last month, in fact, helping out while my mom was going through the worst of the recovery process.) But I've already had something happen that sucks, too - last night, in fact, just a few hours after I got in, my hearing aid suddenly stopped working right when it was in my ear itself. And usually what this means is that a little piece of wax has gotten down into the speaker hole; but when I cleaned it out with the tiny little instruments that came with the hearing aid, it still didn't work, which makes me worried that something more serious is wrong.

Ultimately it's not too horrible a situation, because the hearing aid is still under warranty (I just got it earlier this year, in fact) and I'll easily be able to get it fixed or replaced once I get back to Chicago. But for now it's just so fucking annoying and frustrating, because for obvious reasons I interact with ten times the amount of people here in St. Charles than I ever do in Chicago (my family, my family's friends, my dad's coworkers, my dad's students, etc etc), and it just fucking sucks to miss 75 percent of the conversation, which is always what happens when I don't have my hearing aid in. So, we've made a little emergency appointment with an audiologist here in St. Charles for tomorrow, and I'm hoping that they'll have good news and will be able to fix whatever's wrong right there at their offices. And if not, then it's back to me being 75 percent deaf for the next eight days, right when I have dozens of people to interact with here in town. Sigh.

So what's on tap for me this week? Oh, well, not a whole hell of a lot, as is usually the case whenever I'm down here. I am, however, probably going to be meeting up with TGS this week (if we can get the details worked out), which I'm looking forward to. For those who originally missed it, TGS stands for "The Good Samaritan," a reader of mine here in St. Louis who unbelievably donated an entire Mac G4 desktop system to me earlier this year (including a 17-inch monitor), along with what has to be $10,000 to $20,000 in software and typefaces, simply because he bought a new computer recently and couldn't stand the thought of sticking his old one in the basement, when someone like me could so obviously use it more. Good thinking, TGS! I don't suppose anyone out there has any spare airplane tickets to South Africa just lying around as well, do they?

Back in October, when he brought the computer over in the first place, we didn't get to spend a lot of time hanging out - just 20 minutes or so, talking about just generalities - so I'm excited about the chance to get together with him this week, if it works out, because it sounds like he's had a fascinating life so far that I want to hear more about. Oh, and let's see, with any luck I'll be able to meet up with my old college friends Tim and Beth again as well, who are married now and have kids and live here in St. Louis. And I'm getting a haircut this week, which is just oh-so-fucking exciting, I know; and I might possibly try to go down to this club here in St. Louis called Cicero's this Sunday, because the paper says that they have a poetry open mic, which is always a fun justification for getting out and meeting people in another city. And, well, that's basically it, other than watching a whole fuck of a lot of cable television, eating much better than I usually do, and smoking a whole bunch of cigarettes on the front porch of my parents' house. Hey, I don't suppose any of you are in St. Louis yourselves this week? I don't suppose you'd want to get together for a drink or to see a band, or, you know, have hot kinky sex with a near-stranger or whatever? Yeah, I figured not.

Wow - you wouldn't believe how much email I've received now concerning my recent thoughts on Bob Crane, the movie Auto Focus, and the nature of codependent relationships; thanks, everyone, for sending in your thoughts and compliments. (Oh, and I agree with what many of you pointed out, that Greg Kinnear is simply superb in that movie. With every new movie he does, in fact, my admiration for Kinnear just grows and grows. Who would've guessed that some good-looking smartass cable-television host would have such acting chops? Certainly not me, back when I was a fan of E!'s "Talk Soup" in the early '90s.)

Of course, I've received a fair share of hate mail and critical comments over those entries as well, including a very intriguing one by a person calling themselves "Jennifer Trenchant." He or she has basically challenged me to discuss the issue of dependency and addiction as it relates to my own life - to stop beating around the bush, that is, to stop dropping little half-hints about my past into this journal and to just come out with it all in a very plain way. And in fact this is something I've been wanting to discuss at the journal for awhile, about where it is that my own life overlaps some of these creepy, dysfunctional creative projects I'm such a fan of, and in what way my own experiences influence how I view such subjects as sexual addiction, drug addiction, codependent relationships and the like.

But there are complications with writing such an entry as well, or at least in the completely honest way I would want to write such an entry: concern that I will upset the family members of mine who read this journal; a desire not to put words into the mouth of my exgirlfriend, or to imply opinions that she may not hold herself; and of course a simple desire as well to hide certain incidents from my past from the growing amount of stalkers I have because of this site (which is a whole other entry on its own, this new class of much scarier stalkers I've picked up this year, because of blogs in general becoming much more popular and well-read...but I digress).

So I'll make you all a deal, okay? I'm going to try to talk about this subject in detail tomorrow, but I'm declaring right now that I'm not responsible for any emotional damage it might do to family members who read it - so if you're a relative yourself, or someone else who gets easily upset by stories about addiction and dependency, I urge you to not read tomorrow's entry. And I also am going to throw away any emails I receive about the subject as well, without reading them or opening them; so please don't bother sending in your scary little stalker comments because they're going straight to the trash unread. (And conversely, of course, don't bother writing supportive emails either, because they'll be automatically going into the trash too.) Okay? Okay.