In the fall of 1995, I took a class called Theory & Criticism. It was the capstone for my major in terms of complexity, thought and sheer volume of material digested.

The way the class worked, each of us selected a day and the readings for it and prepare to lead a conversation in the class, attempting to spur debate or moderate the conversation as it evolved. I selected the day that had two works set against one another: Aristotle’s Poetics and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

If you come from a theater program worth its salt, Poetics is a common point of reference. TO, as those familiar with it refer to it, is a little less common, and was far less known to the wider theater community in 1995 than it is now. English language journal sources were sparse, and the web as a source for anything other than scientific-based research was still in its embryonic stages. As such, most of what I learned about TO came from Boal himself via his writing, and only as theory. (There had been some effort to put his theories into practice in his home country of Brazil, and in Germany, but papers about those efforts had not been translated into English at that stage.)

Boal, and that first book of his, struck a deep, resonant chord in me. In a nutshell, Boal sought to create methodologies that destroyed the conventional way people thought of theater. There was to be no actor-audience separation. There was to be no set script, just an issue and a common community. There did not need to be any trappings of a formal theatergoing experience – seats, tickets, tech. Even the space could be “found” or otherwise un-theatrical. Boal wanted to strip all of that away because, as he saw it, we were all – you, me, the person next to you in traffic – engaged in the act of theatre on a constant basis. His whole point with Theatre of the Oppressed was to draw attention to the ways in which this was happening and, after a fashion, deconstruct the social fabric to get at the underlying problem or issue, whatever it may be.

I was absolutely riveted by his notions. Along with my copy of The Empty Space, Boal’s book was, and remains, one of the few books I would rescue from a burning building. Ever since I really started having my own thoughts about anything at all, I really questioned the necessity of artificial barriers in any context. I came of age in the late 80s and early 90s, when barriers were coming down, in a very real and tangible way, all over the world. Why not, I wondered, continue that effort into the conceptual and rhetoical barriers that continued to separate us? MJS introducing that book to Theory & Criticism solidified those ambient notions in my head.

Boal’s career went on from there, where he expounded and revised his thinking through the 90’s as he sought to affect change and help others do the same. A branch of therapy evolved, dramatherapy, that has steadily gained adherents over the past two decades. Boal himself went on to devise a form called the Legislative Theater and was elected as a councilman Rio de Janeiro based on the principles of it. TO clinics, workshops and performances have sprung up all over the world and remain as important, if geographically sparse, extensions of his own work.

Boal died yesterday after a long battle with leukemia. He’s left behind a complex and fascinating system of theater that combines elements of sociology, activism, improvisation and psychology, one that requires of its practitioners a mastery of a vast array of skills, from rhetoric and diplomacy to issues-based knowledge and the ability to synthesize a coherent plot out of the spaghetti strands of reality that do not appear to be related.

Descanse em paz, Boal.

So, today, Republic of Texas President Governor Rick Perry obliquely announced that Texas could secede from the union.

First: Wow. Everything’s bigger in Texas, even Teh Crazy.

Second: he clearly hasn’t thought this through. Texas secession = immediate brain drain in Houston, because Texas doesn’t get to keep NASA. Also, good luck in cleaning up Galveston the next time another Ike comes through. Also, good luck on building that border fence y’all are so fond of talking about.

Third: This is addressed specifically to my Republican friends who don’t live in Texas: You will never have another Republican president in your lifetimes. Let alone the fact that you’ll have to live down the albatross of being the party that rent the Union asunder, losing Texas puts an impossible strain on your Electoral College hopes. Texas represented 34 electoral votes in the 2004 and 2008 elections, 32 in the ‘92, ‘96 and ‘00, and 29 in the 80’s. Care to imagine what those elections might have looked like without Texas?

2004: In the real world, Bush won 286 to 252 (let’s imagine that the weirdo in MN actually voted for Kerry, not an Ewards / Edwards ticket). In the Forty-Nine United States (the Seven Squared), the 2004 election would have ended in an electoral lockup at 252. With two fewer Senators and 22 fewer Representatives, it’s not clear-cut that the Congress would have been leaning Republican, and thus unclear that a tie would have automatically gone for Someone Other Than Bush (since, being from Texas, might not have been eligible to run in the first place). Result: Unclear, but likely Kerry wins.

2000: Real world: Bush 271, Gore 266. Seven Squared outcome: Bush’s alt-hist replacement 239, Gore 266. Gore wins handily, and Katherine Harris never becomes a notable figure in history.

1996: Was alreadya Clinton cakewalk, but the margin for Dole gets that much more embarrassing: 379-127.

1992: Clinton’s first election is an easy victory over George H. W. Bush’s alt-history replacement (most likely: Howard Baker of Tennessee, who could match Bush’s chops in intel & defence, or, without TX as the southern anchor, a pick from the NE like Lowell Weicker.), 370-136.

1988: Bush was never Vice President (ineligible to run), so Reagan’s VP pick in ‘80 might have been someone like PA Senator Richard Schweiker, Reagan’s pick in ‘76, when he lost the nomination to Ford, or someone else. (Bob Dole, arguably the heart and soul of the party, at least in the Senate, was probably an unlikely candidate for the job, sharing the same mid-west roots and fiscal conservatism that Reagan possessed. He wouldn’t expand the ticket by a whole lot. Schweiker, Baker, Weicker, Dole – one of them go up against Dukakis in 1988. Aside from being one of the biggest snoozefests in the history of narcolepsy, it’s hard to extrapolate which alt-history VP-cum-candidate would have made the biggest impact, and who (if any of them) would have beaten Dukakis. In any event, the real world 1988 results were 426-111 for GHWB. It would have been much, much closer than that (397-111 at a minimum, minus GHWB’s stature on the world stage), and the biggest swing in electoral college history (as the Democrats mount an amazing comeback from the alt-hist 496-13 drubbing they took in 1984). But, hell, I’m feeling generous. Let’s say the Republicans still carry in ‘88.

So, ignoring for the moment that it wouldn’t have even been GWB running in 2000 and 2004, The Democrats win five consecutive Presidential elections, aren’t out of power nearly as long in Congress (because remember, you Republicans suffer a net loss ten or more seats in every session – not enough to overcome 1994, but it makes the D comeback easier), and we don’t have to listen to the insufferable Jerry Jones talk about how awesome his Cowboys are. Ever.

In short, a Texas secession virtually guarantees that Democrats win the White House for the foreseeable future. It behooves you, my Republican friends not in Texas, to beg and plead with Perry and his ilk (tea partiers, all) to tone down the crazy a bit. You are doing nothing good for your party, or the country.

(There’s another side of me that thinks, as a Democrat, and a cynic, let them go. Not worrying about Texas’ EVs, plus the benefit of everyone not liking a brown-skinned President moving to the same former State and out of the United States, seems like it might not be such a bad thing. Plus, I’m going to San Antonio in August for a conference. It’ll give me an excuse to renew my passport and collect some of that crazy foreign money you non-Americans use.)

PS: The DHS report that came out this week talking about the dangers of “right-wing extremists” was not talking about you, my Republican friends (yes, even you, Texas), unless you choose to affiliate yourself with Timothy McVeigh circa 14 years ago this week, or Richard Poplawski circa two weeks ago. Let’s put that canard to rest now, shall we?

If you grew up watching the Phils, as I did, you don’t need to ask “Who’s Harry Kalas?’ He was the voice that kept you interested in a team that otherwise sucked ass.

He got to call his championship Phils when they won last year and then, I guess, figured he’d seen enough. He died today in the press box down at Nationals Park before the game today. He was the last of the old guard of legendary broadcasters. New voices have taken over the press boxes across the league, and the Phils have a decent enough pool of announcers now, but it will not ever be like listening to Harry and Whitey.

I don’t know if this will get yanked from YT, but you should probably watch it sooner rather than later. It’s one of my favorite memories. I was at this game and taped it. It was a great game – a massive Jack Clark upper deck homer, 15 innings, Steve Jeltz closing the deal with an RBI triple, and a massive thunderstorm on the way home where we saw one of those large oil tanks along 95 get hit by a bolt of lightning and burst into flames.

Anyway. Enjoy.

I used to love spring. I still do, in momentary bits and pieces, when a fresh breeze washes away the humidity for a moment, or a catch a random wafting flowerscent. But more and more, I’ve really come to absolutely dread this month. The stuff going down in NY state today really doesn’t allay my fears at all.

Let’s recap all the bad shit that’s gone down in the month of April in recent history:

• April 19, 1993: After a multi-month seige, the Branch Davidian compound in Waco goes up in flames. Dozens die.
• April 19, 1995: Timothy McVeigh detonates a truck bomb outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168, including a member of my extended family.
• April 20, 1999: In the midst of a multi-year spike in school shootings around the country, two teens at Columbine High School set the standard for that sort of thing, killing 13.
• April 16, 2007: Another campus shooting, this time at Virginia Tech. A nutcase with delusions of grandeur kills 32 before ridding the rest of us of his existence.

So, yeah… not real thrilled that we’re at this point in our axial tilt.

There’s a whole heap of crap relating to this financial meltdown that I just don’t have the time or capability to write intelligently about. But there’s a particularly ugly thing going around that this entire mess didn’t even start until Obama took over. I’ll take time to provide links to comments from the right wingers if you ask, but suffice it to say that there’s a non-trivial percentage of the population today who believe with all their heart and all their soul that Obama is to blame for the AIG bonuses story that broke today, since the AIG bailout was Obama’s doing. So I’d just like to pull some sourced quotes from the AIG Wikipedia article as I found it just now. Please take a note of the dates.

On September 16, 2008, AIG suffered a liquidity crisis following the downgrade of its credit rating.

Snip.

On September 14, 2008, AIG announced it was considering selling its aircraft leasing division…

Snip.

… Wall Street had broken down and AIG may file for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, September 17.

Snip.

On September 22, 2008, AIG was officially removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Snip.

As of October 24, AIG has drawn a total of $90.3 billion from the emergency loan…

Snip.

On October 9, 2008, the company borrowed an additional $37.8 billion…

Snip.

On November 10, 2008, the U.S. Treasury announced it would purchase $40 billion in newly issued AIG senior preferred stock…

Snip. And meanwhile…

The following week (of September bailout), AIG executives participated in a lavish California retreat which cost $444,000…

Snip.

AP reported on October 17 that AIG executives spent $86,000 on a luxurious English hunting trip….

Snip.

On November 10, 2008, just a few days before renegotiating another bailout with the US Government for $40 billion, ABC News reported that AIG spent $343,000 on a trip to a lavish resort in Phoenix, Arizona.

Snip.

Please note that none of those dates is even remotely close to when Obama took office. They took all of their TARP money before mid-November.

To my friends to the right: please, please stop getting the unarguable facts wrong. Quit making shit up. It’s laughable, and it makes you look like fools. I would prefer Obama have a loyal opposition intelligently challenging his policies to the betterment of all Americans rather than this balderdash you all are getting out there right now.

I continue to watch the plummeting value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average with a fascination approaching voyuerism. And so, not willing to idly give in to that baser nature of existence, I decided to make something of it.

If the DJIA drops below the level it was at the day I graduated from college, 5687.50, I will buy stock.

Only 1,300 points left to go, Financial Markets! At this rate, you’ll get there some time next week.

Also in the news today, this from Spencer Ackerman:

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair delivered the annual Worldwide Threat Assessment briefing to the Senate intelligence committee today, and somehow, the prospect of swarthy men detonating a mall in Sheboygan didn’t make the grade.

He goes on to cite a report in the Post restating that point. This leads any rational mind to wonder: despite its increasing irrelevance to the lives of average Americans, wouldn’t it be an excellent chance for the bulk of America to officially breathe a little easier by knocking the Homeland Security Advisory System down a notch, to condition Blue?

So A-Rod doped up in 2003. Go figure. I think he deserves just about every log of poo that gets hurled at him for it.

Bud Selig, baseball’s Jackass of Two Centuries, came out today and said that A-Rod “shamed the game“. And you know what pisses me off about that?

… the baseball commissioner indicated no plans to punish the three-time AL MVP. “I am saddened by the revelations,” Selig said in a statement issued Thursday.

Seriously? How many more players are you going to forgive, Bud? How many more times does shit like this have to happen on your watch before you actually do something about it? You incompetent boob.

You know what saddens me, Bud? That you’re going to let jackasses like Rodriguez and Bonds and all the other crack-smokers dopers into the Hall of Fame just as soon as you can, but folks whose damage to the game of baseball is questionable at best (c.f., Pete Rose) are still banned. I mean, I know why that’s the case – Pete could never be the draw to Cooperstown that any of your starfucking children these days could be, and you’d never be able to charge $30 for “cheap” seats at your venues like you do now because the term “baseball fundamentals” doesn’t exist in your vocabulary. I just wonder how you sleep at night. Do you actually think the decisions you’ve made over the past two decades have done anything but damage the game on a fundamental level?

I mean, aside from the profits you’ve bankrolled.

Seriously, dude. Whatever your next job is, don’t sit back and watch a problem blossom before your very eyes, congratulate and celebrate miscreants committing that sort of behavior (c.f., the guy who broke Hank’s record), then say you’re “saddened” when the biggest earner in your company says he’s part of the problem too. I call bullshit, sir.

Well, I’m now officially disheartened and disappointed by the prospects of an Obama presidency that stands for True Change in Washington:

Obama Justice Department Supports Bush ‘State Secrets’ Claims

Seriously??!? The last President painted such broad strokes and whitewashed so much of their action to the point where I, the majority of Americans, and most of the rest of the world had lost confidence in the United States to be moral leaders and good stewards of the planet.

The fact that the DOJ is now trending in the direction of the Cheney-influenced, heavily politicized DOJ of the Bad Old Days makes me realize that even with the soaring campaign, there’s a small chance – ever so small – that there might not be a person in this country who is both a) Capable of bringing True Change and b) Capable of being President.

Whatever. People suck.