I have this thought, or this theme of interrelated thoughts - something like that - which find its way into the front of my brain every now and then. When there's time. When it sees an opening, a break in the nearly constant barrage of thoughts regarding you-know-who and you-know-what.

It goes like this:

There's something there. Really and truly, and weirdly and unexpectedly, and sneakily and secretly, and wonderfully and scarily, there's something there.

I like it. Nothing will ever come of it, but I like it anyway.

The theme to the last few nights, if I had to pick a single theme, is that I'm supposed to be in Las Vegas. I was supposed to go there in early July, for a contract of at least six months. Despite a lot of unanswered questions and other loose ends here, or maybe because of those things, I was really looking forward to it.

But noooooooooooo!

The potential customer lost their funding, and so I lost my opportunity. Or at least I lost that opportunity.

I've been talking with StupidGirl a lot lately. Two or three times during each conversation, she'll pipe in with, "Dave, you're supposed to be here now!"

And I agree wholeheartedly. And not because of the aforementioned employment opportunity. I'm supposed to be there now.

I'm looking at November. My current engagement ends the first week of that month. Whether they'll want to extend my contract, or perhaps even hire me permanently, I don't know. Of course I'm hoping for further employment. But I think that if I'm going to keep working here I'm going to take a vacation in November. To Las Vegas, for a week or so.

I so need a vacation.

In an effort to keep my slackage from reaching epic proportions, I will now attempt an entry. I don't have a topic in mind, though, so I make no claims as to the readability or interestingness of this entry.

I'm still muddling through, trying to make some sense out of things. Coming up with excuses, basically, for the ways I've been treated and for the ways I've reacted. Sometimes the excuses I make up persist for a while, and sometimes they don't.

I keep trying to manufacture some kind of perception wherein everybody gets to be a good person. I used to try to make it so everybody could get along. I've stopped trying to do that. It was never going to work when I was the only one trying. I'm afraid that the good-person thing is going to fail as well. There's very little recent evidence to back up that particular claim.

I can probably still make it so everybody doesn't hate each other. Maybe.

Damn. It's been two months, as of today.

There are things! And they're happening!

Yay!

That's just about all I can say.

But I wonder, I can't help but wonder, even though I know it's stupid to wonder.

Am I finally awake, or have I merely shifted to a new dream?

What was I supposed to feel, four hours ago?

I ask because it's become quite clear to me that what I actually feel - this is so irrelevant that I'm the only one who even notices it anymore. And even that's only barely.

I ask what I was supposed to feel, because I have no idea.

Relieved? Irritated? Hopeful? Hopeless? Frustrated? Loving? Useful? Useless? Guilty? Happy? Sad? Nostalgic?

Tell me what I was supposed to feel. Is it the same thing as yesterday, when almost the exact same fucking thing happened?

And, while you're at it, tell me what I'm supposed feel right now. Now that it's been four hours.

I go hours and days and weeks. In the past, I've gone months and years. Four hours certainly used to be something, but now it's nothing nothing nothing nothing.

Tell me.

Better yet, reach inside me and place the proper emotions into those empty places wherever you see fit.

My vote, if I'm allowed a vote, is for irritated. I was having a nice afternoon with HatGirl, and the woo-hoos of my phone were a distraction. Ironically, the lack of woo-hoos right now is proving to be a distraction from breathing. But I've been wrong before. I'm probably supposed to be feeling something else entirely.

Tell me what that was supposed to accomplish, and I'll do my best to comply. I've got nothing better to do, after all.

Just to clarify, I did vote for Obama. But maybe I didn't do it for the right reasons.

I voted for him because he's black. And because he wasn't Sarah Palin. But mostly because he's black.

I remember saying, back before the campaigns even began, that Osama bin Laden could run as a Democrat against the Republican second coming of Jesus Christ (of Nazareth, heh), and still win in a landslide. So great was the hatred for Bush, and by extension, the hatred for all white male Republicans, fuck, even Dukakis might have had a chance in 2008.

Now, that's not to take away from what Obama did. Not at all. But I do think that, in 2017 when his reign ends, the greatest thing he'll have ever done will be to have been elected President while simultaneously being black.

And this was no small feat.

By being elected, he gave hope to millions of Americans, and he smashed excuses for those same millions and for millions more. No longer can a black person - or any member of any minority for that matter - give up on themselves because the system is against them. The system may still be against them, but no longer can that be their excuse.

I saw it in the eyes of blacks all over Louisville, right after the election, and I still see it today. Not just pride, they always had pride, but hope.

What other president can do what Obama has done, simply by being elected?

Hillary could have done similarly, albeit for a different group of people, and I believe that she would have made a better president than Obama. But elections are never about who would perform better in office. Elections are about who's the better candidate. And Obama was definitely the better candidate. In many ways, he still is, as he's already campaigning for his re-election bid in 2012.

The man is never off-stage, and he knows it.

And besides, he's not Sarah Palin.

So apparently our President gave a speech last night. I was asleep, paying what I believe that was the proper amount of attention, but a lot of people actually watched the thing. And then they started talking about it and writing about it. So far this morning I've heard and read reactions of two distinct flavors:

1. Oh noes! The death camps are going to get me!

2. All hail Barack Obama!

And then people on both sides call the people on the other side a bunch of poopie-heads.

In other words, nothing has changed. Despite the fact that we've got a young, charismatic, and black man for a President, we're still just as polarized as ever.

On the one side, we have the cautionaries. This camp subscribes to the Slippery Slope Theory of Everything, and a typical argument from them might be, If stem cell research is allowed to continue, before too long abortions will be mandatory so the labs can meet their quotas.

And then we have the reactionaries. To them, everything is broken, and so everything needs fixing. Oh, and it needs to be fixed the right way, which just happens to be their way. A typical statement from a reactionary might be, Blah Obama blah blah change blah hope blah Bush sucks blah.

I bet most of us would like to see ourselves as standing somewhere between these two extremes. And maybe we do, most of the time, but there are issues for each of us that force us to one side or the other. What bothers me is that some people become so firmly entrenched in their camp that it becomes useless to talk to them at all. I call these people assholes.

Don't get me wrong, though; some of my best friends are assholes.

I really feel like crap. Really.

It's not even 8:30, and I'm going to go to bed.

Goodnight, cruel world.

I can forgive a lot of things. I have forgiven a lot of things. More than anyone else would have forgiven.

But this?

How the fuck am I supposed to forgive this and still manage to maintain some semblance of dignity?

I am not a doormat, though I've played one in the past, when it seemed that a doormat was needed.

I did what was necessary, or at least what seemed necessary at the time, not because of what those things were, but because of who needed them.

Because of who needed me.

And I liked it. Loved it, even. I lived for those opportunities.

And now?

Summary dismissal.

Of whatever the fuck you want to call it. Friendship? Something more? Something less? Something else?

I don't care what you call it. Just pick something. And don't say nothing. Don't you fucking dare say nothing.

We may no longer exist, but I still do exist. Barely.

And what's left of me deserves more than this. Even the worst person on Earth would deserve more than this.

More than nothing.