L. Frank Ghost sings a jaunty song

Have you ever gotten the idea that you've run out of things to write about? I had this feeling recently, and while it obviously didn't totally last (I mean, just look at how long this entry is), it sometimes seems like I just keep repeating myself. I'll occasionally think of something I want to write, and then wonder if I've done it before. And I don't want this journal to go into reruns, you know? Anyway, here are three things that are probably quite similar to other things I've written before, but I hope you find them no less interesting for that.

1. On his latest show, Bill Maher cited a statistic about how women who get married and have kids are more likely to start voting Republican. The thing is, it seems to me that Democrats are usually more in favor of social programs to give aid to children. Yeah, I know that modern Republicans sell themselves as the Family Values Party, but doesn't Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs tell us that food is a higher human priority than Bibles? So it kind of confuses me. I know people are supposed to get more conservative as they get older, as with the adage, "If you're not a liberal at age [x], you have no heart; if you're not a conservative at age [y], you have no brain" (with no two versions of the quote that I found via Google search agreeing on the values of [x] and [y], aside from [y] obviously being higher). That hasn't been true for me, but then, I'm not even 30 yet. I guess I've always leaned toward the left, but I've tried to become more politically aware in recent years. I'm probably also more moderate in some ways, though. I think a sign of increasing maturity (not that I'm especially mature, but I like to think I'm more so than I was, say, ten years ago) isn't so much changing your general political views, but rather obtaining more of a sense of realism about them. Kids who think anarchy, communism, all-out Libertarianism, laissez-faire capitalism, or world peace, and nuking 'em all and letting God sort 'em out are cool ideas often come to realize that these things might not work out so well in the real word. But then, plenty of people never seem to realize this. And now I've gotten way off the original topic, but I can do that on my own journal if I want to, right? {g}

2. Hey, do you want to see some anti-drug propaganda so bad as to make just about every other effort in the War of Drugs look downright intelligent? I'm sure you do! So here, courtesy of arfies, comes Latawna, the Naughty Horse, Learn to Say "No" to Drugs.

While I'm on this general subject, it seems like "just say no" and other similar campaigns are geared almost entirely toward resisting peer pressure. And that makes sense in a way, since that probably IS why most kids get into drugs, although I doubt it's so much of a case of friends trying to shove drugs down your throat (or into whatever body part a particular drug is taken through). But when they play commercials suggesting that, say, anyone who smokes pot can't think for themselves, doesn't that let out the people who chose to smoke pot under their own volition?

3. While she may be successful at walking and talking with the animals, Melinda Doolittle apparently couldn't garner enough support from Middle America to stay on American Idol. And here I thought she was a shoe-in. She WAS basically a ringer, but I read something yesterday that suggested that Jordin might be as well. I suppose I'm rooting for Blake now (hey, anyone else notice that "Blake Lewis" is an amalgam of the names of the two main members of Rilo Kiley?), even though he really can't win with the judges. If he does the beatboxing, they're all, "You don't have to do that on every song!" And if he doesn't, they're all, "Where's the beatboxing? That's YOU, dawg!" And Jordin might be better off not winning anyway, since she'd probably be afraid Clive Davis would give her The Gay. :P

This week's show was the one where the remaining contestants visited their hometowns, so the people who called them weirdos in high school could see what successful freaks they'd become. These episodes always irk me somewhat, because I remember how unpopular I was with pretty much everyone I went to school with, and think of how annoyed I'd be if they all pretended to love me because I'd suddenly become marginally famous.