The Corpuscle

I tell you, I get so many crackpot notions it's hard to keep track of them all. It's hard having a mind that comes up with (what feel like) brilliant solutions to problems that either don't exist, or are not particularly amenable to my particular Strokes of Genius. These things hang around in my head -- impossible to get rid of -- like a case of ideational crabs. Herewith, therefore, a little intellectual Kwell:

* "Brother Blog, Sister Blog" *

I came up with this one while engaged in a discussion about how liberals should be nicer to religious lefties -- i.e., being nasty to religious lefties is obviously bad for a coordinated response to the right-wing. Naturally I agreed with this notion, but I also thought it was a two-way street. For example, it's kind of hard to feel like "working together" when religious-lefties get mad at gay-lefties for constantly bringing up gay marriage as an issue.

So then I started thinking, you know, there ought to be a way to help us work out these things. These sorts of things are relatively easy to work out between individuals, people you know, etc. At least it's that way for me. It's when you talk at each other in blocs that things get messy.

So what if, I thought, somebody set up a kind of "dating service" for blogs? The idea would be for lefty blogs with varying causes of primary interest to hook-up and try to find some other lefties with whom they have significant differences, and then try to publicly work out those differences, for the edification of other lefties.

Use the example above. Some religious-lefty blogger who believes gay marriage is either morally wrong or a "distraction from more important matters" (poverty, social injustice, whatever) goes to this "blog dating service" site and tries to hook up with a gay-lefty blogger who believes religion should be totally eliminated from political discussions. The two of them make an agreement that they will become each other's Brother or Sister Blog, and that they will devote some portion of their blogs to conducting a public "working out of their differences". They pledge, at the beginning of their "sibling relationship", that they will eventually arrive at some sort of mutual statement that they both can sign on to. This mutual statement will serve as a kind of agreement regarding how the Brother/Sister Bloggers will move forward together. The public course of the discussion, and the final statement of how they will move forward together would serve as a guide for others who have the same sort of problems with their fellow lefties.

* "How the American Republic Will End" *

The American Republic will end someday. It's just that we don't know how or when. This crackpot notion involves a website where people can give their detailed descriptions of how they define "the end of the American Republic", and describe how that end will come about. The point isn't to come up with ideas on how to make it happen, of course; the point is to get people to think about the unthinkable such that they can maybe help put off the end for as long as possible. The worst thing we could do, of course, is to assume that the Republic will go on and on, like a self-winding watch, without us ever having to pay attention to it. If we are constantly considering the possibility that we might lose what we have, we might be more on the look-out for really dangerous signs that The End is Near.

* "O, Chef Villain of the Future!" *

I think there ought to be a website where people compose missives to the future, the future being defined here as the post-apocalyptic world.

As you know, Bob, our Eloid friends in the future will be dumbheads who don't have any libraries or archives in the caves where they live. In fact, without a little help from us, they will not be able to name those villains here in our present who behaved in ways that brought about the crap world of the future. The idea here would be to lay it out for our friends of the future, put the info in an easily-opened time capsule. You can't make it too hard to find and get into -- Men of the Future might not have eyes or thumbs.

We'd name, for example, the people who worked so hard to make global warming into "a matter scientific debate" -- clowns like Michael Crichton -- when the vast majority of scientists agree the human race is having an effect on our planet's climate. Kind of a Daily Howler for the End-Time set. It won't do them much good as they starve to death on the Gobi-like wastelands of the Yukon, but they nevertheless might appreciate having pictures of people like Crichton to spit on. Just for the hell of it. Assuming they can summon up any saliva for that purpose, of course.

* The End? *

Don't count on it. Things like this come to me all the time. If I have to suffer with them, I can't see any reason why you shouldn't have to as well.