Wednesday, July 27, 2016

More politics and the high school reunion I'm not going to attend

Consider this blog post a "place holder" until I finally get something more substantial on here. I'm currently working on the third in my continuing series of Tragically Hip album overviews. This one is about 1991's Road Apples. I hope to have it up here within the next few days.

So what else is new? I'm trying to survive through the constant stream of craziness in the world. Every week, it seems there is another mass shooting or terrorist attack somewhere on the globe. Meanwhile, the Republican National Convention was last week (watched a grand total of about three minutes of it when I stumbled upon Ben Carson speaking after turning the TV on. Three minutes was quite enough). Now, we are on to the Democratic National Convention. The Democratic Party is about as divided as the Republican, maybe even more. Will Bernie supporters get behind Hillary? Or will they disperse among the third party candidates?

I haven't decided who I'm voting for in November. I know I went over this in a previous post. My fear of a Donald Trump presidency might have me bite the bullet and vote for Hillary Clinton. I still haven't ruled out the possibility of Jill Stein, but I'm leaning towards Clinton. (I will say that, last night, Bill Clinton--ever the charming raconteur--provided a compiling argument in favor of his wife as president--or as compelling as possible given all the controversy that continually swirls over her head).

I'm tired of my friends on the left getting in virtual screaming matches over the Hillary Clinton/Bernie Sanders/Jill Stein divides. The Hillary haters make their feelings known constantly. It's getting to be a real emotional drain being on Facebook and seeing people who are all similar in their world views constantly bickering about Hillary, Bernie, and to a lesser extent, Jill Stein.

In other news, my (gulp) 30th high school reunion is this Saturday, but I'm not going. I thought about it, and went back and forth a few times (at one point actually being rather excited about it), but have finally decided that I just don't care. My memories of high school range from completely lukewarm to decidedly negative. I really had few friends in high school anyway. What would be the point of me going anyway? ("Hey look, you guys didn't kill me! Hey look, thirty years later and I'm not a bloated fat ass!").  Plus, the reunion isn't even anywhere cool. It's at a bowling alley/restaurant in my old hometown, or the town that was my home between 1979 and the late 1980s. I have a hard time considering this particular place my "hometown" since it was the fourth place I lived in by the age of eleven and it just never felt like home. I always felt like an outsider there, and feel even more like an alien when I visit there now.

So that's the story of that. No high school reunion. I've never been to any of my high school reunions and don't think I ever will. It's not even that I feel any negativity towards the people with whom I went to school. I really do not--at least not anymore. I just...don't care.