Winning elections when the economy sucks is one thing (and a quite easy thing at that). The Republicans now face the more tricky task of governing. If they want to spend the next two years continuing to argue about health care reform, fine. That will make it easy enough for Obama and the Democrats then to accuse them of grid-locking Congress and preventing the good work of the people from being done.

What really fueled the mid-term turnaround was not anger against “Obamacare,” but fear. Fear of inaction, fear of deficits, fear of a lack of jobs. Paralyzing the government is not exactly a way to ease such fears, but instead is more like to inflame them. Especially if the economy starts turning around and unemployment begins to fall more rapidly, then it looks even more foolish to denounce the reform as destroying everything when everything is getting better. And if it doesn’t, well then, the GOP is now just as culpable as its political counterpart.

What always strikes me when it comes around to electon analysis is the amazingly short memory people seem to have. Does no one remember how in 2008 and 2006 the Democrats were swept into power using pretty much the same language as the Tea Party, the populists de jeur? Bush was seen as a trampler of the constitution because of the way he handled the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the crisis of the 2004 election. We hear those same words again, “[Blank] is destroying the constitution!” Except this time, it’s Obama with health care and deficits not Bush with bullets and hurricanes.

There’s a certain detachment from logic here and I think it hurts the American people and the political process, but unfortunately it’s the way the systems seem to always function. Yes, I’m sorry, but it’s true, there was never this mythic period of American politics were all our statesmen where good and true and the moral fiber of the country strong. Read a biography of Andrew Jackson or better yet, Aaron Burr. These were some of the dominant politicians of the time and they did some cra-hu-azy shit.

So, my bottomline on Tuesday’s election: people reacted out of a fear that the economy has not grown fast enough. The Republicans told them it was because of the health care and the (completely successful) bailouts of the banks and federal reserve, and people found that easy to believe. Politically, Obama’s and the Democrats’ policies failed and for that people across the country decided they would give the other side some power and a shot to fix things.

Unfortunately, the emphasis is that, politically, health care et al. were a failure, but it’s a little too soon to judge them on a more substantive basis. Health care hasn’t even fully taken effect yet and it’s already being assailed as this dramatically terrible piece of legislation. And of course, there’s the fun fact that while as a whole it’s largely unpopular, its individual components enjoy broad support. Tuesday’s results more accurately reflect a dissatisfaction with the lack of speed in the economic recovery than a repudiation of the Democratic agenda.

However, Obama did himself (and his party) no favors by campaigning as transformational and then governing as presidents pretty much always have. Everyone, liberal or conservative, felt that business in Washington had been conducted as usual. When you can’t live up to the hype, the backlash can be brutal. This has become  increasingly true in our Internet age. Music provides a good analogy. A band can go from little-known to blog-success to Youtube sensation to hipster rejection to musical dustbin in just a few weeks (see: Tapes n’ Tapes). I’d consider the campaign Obama’s debut and the last two years his mediocre sophomore effort, so I have hope that he can come through the criticism and craft that solid third album.

Lastly, the ol’ tax cut debate has been hot once again. As for the argument etc. that taxes will kill all business and, in general, are the most anti-american thing in the world — the highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91 percent and yet it is largely considered a period of economic growth and apple pie. Regan raised taxes and it increased the deficit. Debate on their relative merits all you want, but whatever else they may be, they are not a simple solution to every fiscal problem in the U.S.

Of course, a life that is less structured is more open to moments of serendipity than one lived in a closed loop. Chance encounters, spontaneous ideas, unexpected adventure … such things all depend upon the fact that they can’t be planned for or anticipated.

But these surprises can also be negative in nature, and I am often forced to endure unpleasant experiences that could have been avoided easily by taking action at an earlier date. Sometimes lacking plans can be just as stressful as trying to make them.

An example:

I will briefly point to an sequence of events that, taken in its entirety, was quite epic. I had flown to Europe to visit Lauren, my girlfriend now and at the time then, who was staying in Italy as part of a summer study abroad trip with our university. It was Lauren’s third trip to the country through the program, so she was serving as a kind of student supervisor and had a certain level of fluency with the language.

I timed my trip to coincide with a week-long break in the academic schedule. Our joint travel goal revolved around a visit to Croatia, the land of my forefathers and a mere boat ride across the Mediterranean from Italy. Unfortunately, none of our itinerary quite panned out as planned, mostly because there was so little in the way of a plan.

Once I arrived, my lack of preparedness immediately made itself known. I had done little to learn the language ahead of the trip. At the airport, I had trouble communicating my desire to purchase a sandwich because I kept pointing to a counter full of various versions of the lunch item and simply saying “I would like a sandwich” in Italian. It was a little bit like going to a Pizza Hut here and saying “I would like a pizza.” Your mere presence in the establishment indicates your desire for its product but some further specificity is required to complete the transaction.

When I made it to the village where Lauren and her fellow students were staying, I quickly become confounded by the bus system. Instead of paying attention to the bus numbers and bus stops, I idly rode along. On one occasion, this resulted in me riding on a particularly bus for the entire length of its route without getting off, which required me to then hop on a different bus and go all the way back.

This delay was particularly exacerbating because Lauren was waiting for me back at the hostel so that we could catch a train together. My tardiness meant that we missed our planned 7 p.m. departure and had to take an 11 p.m. ride in a train absolutely packed full of Italians. It was a six-hour, overnight trip, and we literally slept squatting in the small hallway outside the cabins. In another sign of poor foresight, we had failed to realize the weekend was also a national Italian holiday, prompting the large number of travelers.

When we arrived at our destination, a small town from which we would board a ferry to Croatia, we discovered that the boats there had stopped running earlier in the summer. And I say “summer” but the weather at that moment was a drizzly 50 degrees — more like London than Rome.

Where we actually wanted to be was a three-hour train ride back the way we had come. By the time finally made it to the proper town, we had been basically awake for 24 hours. At the ticket window for the ferry, we had to wait for a solid hour behind a group of rowdy Greeks.

Wearily, we conversed with the teller at the ticket window and made yet another unfortunate discovery. The only ferry left to take us across, a trip that we had assumed (you know what they say about that) would be a relatively short voyage, was a 12-hour overnighter with the only available space above decks.  It was more than we could take in our bedraggled state. We relented in our quest to see Croatia, found a hotel and slept for 14 hours.

When I woke up, I thought, as I have many times, “I should have listened to my mother.”

Yet, I am seasoned veteran of missing my target as a result of shooting from the hip so often. One of the things you quickly learn when you frequently fall into such hapless affairs is how to make a go out of it regardless.

So when we woke up and looked at the windows to see the cold and gray of the previous days had decided to stick around, we both quickly agreed that, fuck it, we wanted to go somewhere hot. We found a cheap roundtrip flight to Valencia, Spain, and were off within a few hours. The beaches were beautiful, the wine red and heady, and the walks together long.

So sure, we suffered as a direct result of poor planning and a lack of organization. The trauma of the overstuffed train ride, the disappointment of an empty harbor –  these were all moments that could have been negated had we been better prepared with a well-thought plan.

Yet, although the trip had been, for the most part, a major disaster, in those last few days we found something that brought us together in a way that no carefully planned itinerary ever could. Our previous failures had tied us closer together instead of pulling us apart and also gave our sudden success a sweetness it would have been lacking otherwise.

In the end, it’s hard for me to say which kind of life is best, which is fine by me because, to be honest, I’m not entirely sure I could plan to make things any different.

To be clear, it wasn’t a trip undertaken by my own will. As a hobby, my girlfriend loves to sew, and she recently started making her own clothes. She made some business cards, painted a sign and entered such a fair herself in March, but on this particular occasion we were just browsing.

After a few hours looking at various garments, mugs, prints and jewelry, I came to a realization. If you look past the hand-knit items and cutely crafted tidbits and beneath the kind of hippy vibe that hovers on the surface, these fairs exemplify a kind of ruthless, capitalism that would make Gordon Gekko smile.

Afterall, these aren’t cheaply pumped out products with national ad campaigns to trigger our consumer desires. These are hand-crafted, individually made items that in some cases took hours of work. They represent significant investments of time, money and dreams. If you go home without any sales, you go home not only broke, but heartbroken.

Remember that all the nice people at craft fairs selling stuff are potentially armed with deadly weapons such as scissors.

Each vendor’s space is stuck between two others selling another variety of cute knickknacks and across from three more. Hundreds of people pass by, some stop, some smile, but the vast majority just breeze on through.

Basically, it’s a tough scene. Out of this competitive crowd of cuteness, I’ve noticed that several of capitalism’s classic tactics have found new expression. Just because what you’re selling is cute, doesn’t mean you can’t get dirty.

Tactic #1: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

A particular item caught our collective attention at one of the first booths we visited. The vender had taken the front and back covers from a random assortment of old library reject books, replaced the inside pages with blank ones and then spiral bound it together to make a notebook.

At the time, it seemed quite clever as the books chosen were often amusing titles from children’s series such as “Nancy Drew” to introductory level science texts. My personal favorite was a 1980s-era tome simply called “Lasers” that featured colored lines zipping in and out of a transparent neon box hovering in outer space.

A few booths down, we discovered another vendor had the exact same item stocked as well. In fact, by the time we completed our circuit I would say nearly a third of all the vendors there had that item or one of its variations for sale. It reminded me of the free-for-all markets I often walked through in Asia where you had 16 vendors in a row selling the same pairs of novelty socks.

In many competitive marketplaces, innovation will breed copy cats, some of whom may end up producing a superior product. It was hard to tell who first introduced the old books turned notebooks idea to the craft scene, but, clearly, the item was a hit.

Tactic #2: Give me a sign

With the experience of sitting behind one of those booths while my girlfriend took breaks to try (vainly) to de-stress herself, I know full well how easy it is for someone to move past your location with no more than a cursory glance. In fact, it seems to me that the hardest part of securing a sale is actually getting people to stop.

Sure, you can show up, dump a pile of cute crap on a table and sit behind it with your face in a magazine, but the more innovative and successful crafters followed tried and true advertising strategies. This mostly manifests itself in large, bold signage to clearly signal to potential customers who you are and give them a feeling or image to associate with your products.

Although the goods are in many ways the work of people who consider themselves artists, it takes a business sensibility to really move some merchandise. Elaborate displays, funny posters, custom tags and more are employed in the hopes of creating the opportunity for a sale.

Tactic #3: Same, but different

As I alluded earlier, for a crafter to be successful, they must be able to connect emotionally with potential customers. It’s relatively easy to elicit “Oh my God, that is so cute” and much harder to add “I’m gonna buy it” to that statement.

The easiest way for most crafter to do this is to highlight the environmentally friendly nature of what they make. My girlfriend, for example, fashions the majority of her clothes from Goodwill donations or items leftover from a relative’s wardrobe.

However, I noticed at the fair this weekend that this has become so common that some crafters have found a way to differentiate themselves from the pack. While perusing the aisles, several vendors promoted the fact that their creations were made of “upcycled” materials. This new addition to the English language means, as far as my research could assess, the exact same thing as “recycled” or “reused,” but it certainly sounds a little snappier.

It’s also a little sneaky, a way of lifting oneself apart from everyone else’s equally green goods. So, if perhaps you have been considering moving your artistic endeavors to the marketplace, whatever they may be, I would suggest you take a course in “Business 101.” With competition like that, you’re gonna need it.

Note: An (heavily) edited version of this post was originally published in the Sept. 29 edition of The Kentucky Standard. I re-posted it here because the version that appeared in the paper was about 450 words shorter. Longer is better, right?

I’ve mapped a five-mile route that runs north from my apartment for a few blocks, takes a sharp left and then goes south, veering west again to descend into a subdivision before looping around and coming back the way I came.

It was trail created through trial-and-error and using the supposedly reliable odometer in my grand am. Because of this, it follows along city streets and creates basically one big loop through the neighborhoods of central Bardstown. In its own way, it’s actually a journey that gives a decent overview of the small town’s various faces, a foot tour of the self-proclaimed Bourbon Capital of the World that you may take if you read further.

My apartment is situated in a tiny neighborhood called Henrytown, which for a reason I do not know, has always struck me as sounding somewhat like the name a gay district might have in a larger metropolitan city. In truth, it is named so because it was one of the first subdivisions to be constructed in Bardstown back in the days of yore. It was financed by a wealthy doctor, a one Dr. Henry, and was known thusly as Henry’s town. I’ve been told that somewhere in the yellowed pages of ancient copies of the newspaper I work for, you can see the original ads enticing families to the area.

Unlike some parts of Bardstown, it has not aged well. It occupies a poorer end of the socioeconomic scale, and the apartments next to mine make frequent appearances in the police records for things such as meth busts. However, as I jog south from Henrytown and cross over the railroad, the neighborhood transforms. Properties began popping up that are not old in the poorly-maintained-for-decades sense, but old in the historic-preservation-district sense. A few churches crop up along the way, and then it runs into West Stephen Foster Ave., a street named after Kentucky’s famous song writer. Local history (and lots of tourism brochures) allege that one of the area’s landmark 19th mansions is the building which Foster’s song “My old Kentucky Home” is based on.

In fact, in addition to the street, Foster gets his own state park, a non-profit theatrical group dedicated to putting on sub-par renditions of popular musicals and a mediocre “home style” restaurant. All this, despite the fact that is not even clear if he ever even set foot in Nelson County.

The legacy of Stephen Foster.

Though maybe not as erudite but still cultural important to an understanding of Bardstown, a Five Star gas station and convenience store also sits at the intersection. Have you ever noticed that regions around the U.S. tend to each have their own semi-local brand of convenience stores? Well, this is one of those, the “Kwik-E-Mart” of central Kentucky, so to speak.

Moving on past the busy street, it enters another neighborhood that features one of the area’s fine educational institutes in addition to another historical house or two.

Heading farther west from there it encounters a stretch of run-down houses and an honest-to-goodness feed store. The shelves are lined with products whose uses I can only vaguely imagine. A board above the register lists prices for products in a heavily abbreviated manner that renders the letters into a foreign tongue. I actually went into the place once to ask the owner about an apartment he was renting and I have never felt more out of place. For some reason, the grizzled farmers in their Carharts and John Deere hats just did not take me for one of their own. The store, an oddly agricultural structure in the middle of the town, serves as my route’s reminder of the area’s roots in the tobacco and bourbon industries.

Next, my running path swings past the large, finely preserved house of a well-known local doctor. His fame stems from his founding and heavy contribution to Bardstown’s Civil War Musuem (which is actually a neat little place, if one likes that sort of thing). Then it enters another subdivision that is a slice right out of the apple pie that is Americana. A firmly upper middle-class subdivision, it features full green lawns uninterrupted by sidewalks — a sign of either luxury or poor urban planning, it’s hard to say. It lacks the crassness of the McMasion ‘burbs of the last two decades’ building craze — the kind of place that, heck, you could raise a family in.

After that, I climb a small hill with the sun in my face and then turn back to go through where I’ve been.For authenticity’s sake, I could go through all that again, but I’ll cut you guys a break and consider the tour complete at two and a half miles.

What follows is an account of the experience I wrote for my weekly column at the place of my employ, that mighty bastion of journalistic might The Kentucky Standard. I apologize in advance for the tacky moral stuck on the end, but it is a necessity in the newspaper column business

There are some things that, from an early age, I have sworn I would never do. Yet at around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, I found myself seated on my knees with my head out the open door of an airplane cruising at about 12,500 feet.

Directly behind me was a man whose chest and legs were strapped securely (I hoped) to my back and who seemed very intent on exiting the aircraft, despite the fact that it appeared to be operating perfectly well. In fact, as we poised on the abyss — the flat, patchwork farmland of Illinois spreading out below us — he didn’t even seem to consider the matter worth even the slightest discussion. He counted to three and then we were out the door.

So, what could possess me, a person with a substantial fear of heights, to launch himself into empty space with naught but a bundle of plastic to ensure my survival? Well, to be honest, it wasn’t my idea.

A few weeks ago, my good friend Michael and I were brainstorming ideas for the bachelor party of our soon-to-be-monogamous pal Paul. We knew we would like to avoid the kind of affair you traditionally think of for such an event, but we were stumped on what could prove memorable enough.

Thanks to the web-perusing power of Google, Michael discovered the Web site of Skydive Chicago, at which point he said, “You know, Paul has always said he would wanted to go skydiving” and I said, “Oh no.”

When I was in sixth grade, I spent hours waiting in line for rollercoasters at the Six Flags Amusement Park in St. Louis before bailing out of fear. It wasn’t until two years later that, thanks to the persistent encouragement of a friend, I was able to complete my first ride on one of the up-and-down steel behemoths.

And now, skydiving?

Yet, as the best man in the upcoming wedding, I felt it would be a little bit less than best to be the lone voice of opposition to the idea. So, I signed up and adamantly set my mind to not thinking about it. A few weeks later, there I was experiencing the power of gravity first hand, falling at a rate of 120 miles per hour toward the earth below.

When I touched down a few minutes later, parachute safely deployed, I knew that rollercoasters would never compare to the thrill that I had just experienced.

Certainly, there is some risk to this extreme sport and the rare death is a reality of skydiving. But risk is omnipresent in our lives — from the foods we eat to the wiring in our walls to our walks across the street.

We combat this by securing our lives in routine, defending against dramatic shocks through repetition. However, for us to continue to grow, we must be exposed to new ideas, pushed beyond our limits and outside our comfort zone.

So, if you get the chance, step outside that aircraft, if only metaphorically, and let yourself fall a little bit before pulling the parachute.

-Originally published in the Kentucky Standard July 28, 201

On a rather ironic postscript, I want to note that at roughly the same time I was engaged in an activity well-known for its potential lethality and generally regarded as entailing a substantial amount of risk, Lauren (my girlfriend) was going on a bike ride in St. Louis. Though not without its own dangers, riding a bike is considered, on the whole, a rather typical and safe way to spend an afternoon.

Unfortunately, a hazardously placed piece of sidewalk caused Lauren to flip over the handlebars and the resulting fall broke her arm. Thankfully, the fracture will not require a cast, and with the help of some prescription-strength painkillers, she should fully functional again very soon. I am relieved that she will be alright, but I strongly condemn the sidewalk responsible for this heinous act and encourage the U.N. to issue the strongest sanctions available against this patch of rouge concrete.

An activity more dangerous than riding a bicycle, apparently

Also, you generally get to attend events with lots of free food, particularly of the sandwich platter variety.

Bonus!

In fact, an example of the way assignments’ can surprise you with the unexpected occurred this weekend. But before I detail the moment itself, I’ll explain why, in the service of journalism and the enlightenment of the masses, I travelled with camera in tow to a few choice proprietors of beer and spirits late Saturday evening.

My assignment was to capture the opinions of our local citizenry as per an indoor smoking ban soon to be effected within the city limits. At a sports bar of well-known distinction, I figured I could gather responses that reflected a thorough consideration of the issues, its pros and cons and just how much ammunition and dry goods needed to be stockpiled to resist the communist takeover of our American government.

While there I learned the shocking truth about our city council men, individuals, it was said, who were power-mad and filthy rich, determined to rob business owners and citizens of their God-given rights. That very night, a group of staunch companions agreed that their next week’s libation would have to occur in the comfortable, smokable air of their own homes.

Pictures were attempted to capture the decisive moment, the bargoers’ metaphorical fist (or perhaps middle finger?) raised to struggle against the oppressive reach of our elected officials. The bar, however, was very dark, the flash a little too overwhelming and the individual behind the camera rather inept, so close-ups of the outline of what could possibly be an ashtray were snapped instead.

The mission accomplished, I headed out toward the parking lot that wrapped around the bar. The spaces were occasionally interspersed with small, rectangular rings of landscaping, perhaps a tree and a bush or two. As I neared my car, I saw a man with his back toward me leaning against his own vehicle, positioned a few cars down and across from mine.

His car was parked near one of these outcroppings of landscaping and sitting on its curb was a woman of similar age and intoxication. With his car partially blocking my view, I thought, lightly amused, that the scene had the appearance of indecency — she seemed to be performing the act of oral sex. Ha, how ridiculous of me I thought, no one would ever do that in a parking lot, fully visible and not more than 30 feet from the bar’s huge, floor-to-ceiling windows.

I’ll be damned, I thought when I reached my vehicle, that is actually exactly what is going on.

The motion of the man hiking up his pants erased any lingering doubt from my mind as to the activity taking place nearby. The woman rose from her position, giggling at the realization that their impropriety had been spotted. “You’re crazy,” she said to the guy. “You’re crazy like me.”

I agreed with her assessment, think it sounded like a match made, engineered and destined by God himself. Although ostensibly the funniest and most interest moment of the night, it unfortunately could not be included in the story on the smoking ban. I work for a family publication, after all.

In fact, smoking enjoyed a broad popularity throughout Asia. From the upper class, suited, hair-parted, heavy drinkers in expensive bars to the grime-faced, blown-back haired motor bike delivery drivers of fried chicken, cigarettes were an ubiquitous presence on Asian lips. College students immersed in a game at Internet cafes, bar goers practicing their rudimentary English with drunk foreigners and old men squatting to gamble at a card game or just the traffic go by, all had packs in their back pockets.

Women smoked as well, of course, but their displays of carcinogen inhalation were less public. Taboo, I was told.

South Korea had its own brands, too. Like a lot of global items of indulgence, a robust number of local companies competed with the overseas juggernauts. I stuck with what I knew most of the time. I guess I didn’t consider cigarettes an avenue of adventure.

There may have been large public campaigns against its dangers, but I wouldn’t really have known. It seemed a relatively accepted behavior. Sometimes I thought it must be wrapped up in that odd paradox of Asia, that blatant striving for Western excess on the part of some and the simultaneously battle to uphold the traditions of their own culture by others, all surrounded by a sense of pride and nationalism to rival American Tea Partiers. I would think that and then wonder if I was being xenophobic, if my train of thought had derailed in its attempt to move out of the station.

I would (in my one bedroom apartment in Busan) look at my walls blank of a degree in Asian studies, realize my lack of anything but foreign friends, consider my occasional indulgence in McDonald’s hamburgers instead of Kimbap and wonder if I really knew enough to know what the hell I was talking about.

It felt like when you are in traffic and you wonder what those speeding, slowing, stopping, turning drivers around you are thinking, why they are going where they go. You could hazard guesses based on appearance, on expressions, on makes and models, but all you would know is only what you could conjure up. You’d have to stop traffic to ask the question, to get the answer and that’s, after all, a rather impractical course to take. Christ, it’s an easy way to get hit. Door shut, window closed, music up, from one destination to the next.

In this way, It’s hard to feel like I did anything other than skim the surface during my year abroad. I can tell you Koreans smoke in great numbers and with intensive frequency, but I could only guess as to why. It’s easiest for me to just consider it as an excuse to go back or take it as a lesson in the importance of rolling down the car window. The problem with good lessons, though, is that they always seem the hardest to learn.

In some ways, the debate wears me out. The fundamental nature of the Internet, and the argument its most ardent zealots will put forth, is that it should be an open platform. Software should be editable by anybody and intellectual property such as music, movies and video games freely shared. If that’s true for the hackers, shouldn’t it be true for advertisers as well?

This balance also reminds me a lot of a hard-core capitalist who want markets to face little regulatory hindrance here but then demand that we protect our manufacturing jobs from shipping oversees. It’s an economic theory that values the lowest price and the most efficient method. If you want to keep little plastic shit at Wal-Mart cheap, then that’s the cost.

Of course, I don’t want to really be defending the moves made by Facebook in this situation, but I find it funny that it surprises people so much. Like economics, the logical position is to seek balance, but it’s more of a good time to pick sides and send salvos flying the other way.

When it comes down to it, I have mixed feelings. The thought of Twitter honestly revolts me a little bit. I do not feel the need to tell people obsessively about my current situation or have intimate knowledge of how their dog’s haircut went . The Facebook status feed is close enough for me.

However, I blog and Facebook and all that good stuff, so it’s not that I want to say such activities are without value. It’s more that I think there’s enough traffic out there on the Web these days that is incidental. With a few notable exceptions (think Iranian elections), the problem with Twitter and social media in general is it the information it gives does not inform. People across a spectrum of industries are viewing it all as some sort of Holy Grail, but what the Internet often delivers best is hype. For example, MySpace, which sold for millions and used now almost exclusively by bands and bots.

Questions of privacy usually take center stage with expanding Internet technologies, but it’s also a matter of validation. When that subject is considered, the implications are interesting.

As I said before, my opinion on this is far from consitent and I veer dangerously close to hypocrisy on several levels. Afterall, I am here writing this blog for the very purpose of having other people read my thoughts. I could write this as a note to myself, but then I would be missing the catharsis of perhaps having my musings “liked.” But the meaning of what we say changes in how we say it. Sarcasm remains a tricky thing to always successfully convey without speech and body language.

The question to ask is to what degree is such activity replacing the ways we would normally transit such information. I’ve read several history books lately detailing the lives of famous Americans such as Aaron Burr and Andrew Jackson, and the largest source of material for such accounts is always the personal letters written by such men to their friends and family. It’s possible that if, 100 years ago, I would voice my musings on the world around me with ink and parchment instead of a keyboard and fiber optic cables. All the same, the information would be transmitted.

In this view, the evolution of communciation is relatively benign. However, with every advance of humanity there is invariable something we lose. Our new ways of keeping in touch have also placed demands that we do it, that we master new manners of socializing lest we be affixed with a certain level of social stigma.

It’s even more so on a professional level, where social media is simultaneous a way to present oneself to employer and a way to present a product to a consumer. Success, in several areas of life, doesn’t mean exactly what it used to.

There is also something to said for quantity of quality. As our missives get reduced to 140 characters and Facebook statuses, the importance shifts from what is said to the simple fact that it is said at all. We are encouraged to keep “in touch” via short, simple messages. Our knowledge is tertiary, mostly composed of anecdotes and incidents. The debate on whether or not all this increased interaction is making us closer to our fellow human beings or more remote is still an open question, I think.

With the awareness that much of what we do is public domain comes the need to sell yourself (again, I’m guilty as charged of this one). Truthful articulation becomes secondary and words are measured as units of calculated risk instead of self-expression. When you start to hide things from everyone else, you also invariably start to hide them from yourself. Honesty, along with privacy, is also pushed aside.

I don’t think it’s too much science fiction to think that in 50 or 100 years there could be a strong, popular backlash to our always-on culture. The price of connectivity will always be privacy. Open up the gates if you want, but it might not be a bad idea to shut them off every now and then.

While the running continues, the rest is in the past and I hope to bring more tales of interest and adventure to this space (and actual space if possible, I’m looking at you blog-reading astronauts) on a regular basis. Take, for example, this fasciniting story of fast horses, women in nice dresses and a man who places terrible bets on which one comes in first (the horses that is, not the women).

It appeared in the journal of record for Nelson County, Kentucky, on April 14. Also, there was an article about a man of short stature and little hair becoming a superintendent and revelation of the reason why anyone would actually want to be county clerk.

As natives of Lexington, my parents often took my siblings and me on visits away from the flat Illinois cornfields where I grew up to the green, rolling hills of their ancestral state.

On such vacations, we would stay at my grandma’s house and visit with cousins, but every now and then, we would do something a little more exciting. Aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and cousins would venture out to a venue synonymous with Kentucky, the Keeneland racetrack.

As a kid, I looked forward to these opportunities. It always seemed like an exciting adventure, a kind of spectacle completely foreign to my central Illinois hometown.

Of course, my dad would let me pick out a horse I liked in each race and place a $2 bet, so theoretically I had something at stake. In truth, I would find an equine racer with a cool name and then completely forget about it until my father told me whether I won or not.

Not only was the gambling aspect over my head, so was nearly everybody else. For this reason, I would scramble toward the fence where I could face the track directly. And for a while, nothing would happen. I had a good view of the dirt in front of me, but that was about it.

At some point, the air around me would shift and I would get the sense that the race had begun. Minutes later, there would be muted thunder of the hooves churning up the track and then the animals themselves, briefly, would rush by me.

As a kid, it’s easy to absorb and mimic the moods and actions of adults, even if you do not know why they are feeling or acting that way. So I would shout and yell as the horses rounded the track, only vaguely aware of the reasoning behind the excitement.

I visited Keeneland last weekend for the first time since I have been able to bet under my own power and though my understanding of the event has improved, my ability to choose a winning horse remains at an elementary-school level.

My wagers were based on little more than a loose collection of the horse’s name, the odds on it and “what the cheat sheet says?” I assume the “cheat” refers to the amount of money you lose following its advice.

Now, as an adult what I enjoyed most about the tracks had nothing to do with the activities my older age made available to me. Instead, it was the fun of mingling with the parade of people that pass through the turnstiles at a place such as Keeneland.

From sundress and high heels to cut-off shorts and flip-flops, the background color was constantly shifting and conversations wafted in and out with the spring breezes.

The crowd gathered seemed to extend to all ages, backgrounds and perspectives. It was a giant melting pot of diverse experiences focused into a single shout when that longshot horse starts moving down the middle of the track. That piece of paper in your hand tied you together with all the other people with pieces of paper in their hands.

And sometimes that little slip turns into real money and sometimes that come-from-behind bet is perfectly content just staying behind. As I sat relaxing on one of Keeneland’s green benches, my skin warm from the sun, I knew it really didn’t matter. Win or lose, I still enjoyed the moment.

ˆEdit: Also, forget to add that I have now loosened the authoritarian holds on the commenting and made it so that they are instantly posted. Go crazy, people.

The team that created this had a genius idea. They constructed forums specifically for every single town in America, no matter how small, and then gave any visitors instant access. Like the comments section of an article, simply input a username, your response, pass a bot test and your insightful, informative comment is instantly posted. There is no e-mail registering, no system to prevent multiple postings under different names and not a damn moderator in sight.

It is incredibly easy to create a topic and then populate it with fake posters. Comments are never removed once up, it’s the Internet Libertarian-style.

Though a forum, it also serves as a “news” outlet, if by news you mean rumors posted as fact. In this way, it is actually a kind of competition for my employer, Bardstown’s tri-weekly newspaper The Kentucky Standard. I peruse Topix daily for a few professional reasons – to keep track of what’s on the mind of Bardstown citizens, to check for any references to the newspaper – but mostly for its pure entertainment value.

It is a free-for-all brawl, the rumors and rants of small-town America laid bare. It is the kind of place one goes to “start shit,” as it were. Spurned by your ex-lover? Go on to Topix and create a post calling out that dirty ho/cheatin’ bastard. Fired from a job? Go on to Topix and create a post accusing the management of made-up crimes. Don’t like Mexicans? Go on to Topix and say just that with only 90 percent of the audience calling you a racist.

A solid fifty percent of the topics started will begin with one of two things, either A) a person’s full name, usually followed by a statement about their relative attractiveness B) an inquiry asking who’s the hot (or hideous) person who works at McDonald’s/the Five Star gas station/Wal-Mart.

One of the most interesting things about the Internet is its ability to run the full gamut from the most base of human instincts to our most noble aspirations in the space of a few .com’s. Take, for example, the protests staged after Iran’s recent election. Social media allowed video, images and words from protesters to get into the world from a country that tightly controls any and all dissent.

Contrast that to, say, this example of a Topix user posting on a thread titled “Ashley Auberry.” The poster here is referring to the thread’s namesake and expressing their opinion.

“Well she uses her body to get whateva she wants she’s a hoe,she lives ova here by me behind the courthouse, she brings all kinds men in nd out of her place. she works ova at the new bar not far from here and i heard she’s fu-kin the owner plus a few more mexicans

Truly, the Web is a lawless frontier. And I’m just talking about grammar and spelling.

Let’s take a look at another example. From a thread titled “Who is the girl behind the service desk at Wal-mart?” One user had an interesting tidbit considering the woman in question’s dental hygiene.

“Debbie has no teeth there fake”

There are precious few moments when I think to myself “Gee, I love living in a small town!”, but Topix provides a daily does of reasons to think this. The size of the town allows for the kind of intensely personal discussions that are lost on forums that instead attract their audiences based on a common interest.

I’ve always had some strange fascination with people and ideas that, to my mind, seem a bit crazy, and Topix is a Web site custom built for such nuts.