Today's Blather Forecast ...

Today's Blather:

I am signed up for two blog (it's funny, but I always want to capitalize that word, "Blog", like it's a national institution or a small country populated by nerds) services. There is no obvious purpose for this. I post the same stuff on both blogs. I could explain the reason why this is the case, but it would be tedious and totally un-entertaining (but it would include a reference to my friend Sara Swinson, who introduced me to the world of blog, and whose blog is very worth looking into) so I will skip right to the non-tedious and slightly more entertaining part (if, that is, you are the sort of person who is entertained by the random ramblings of a prefessional blatherer).

I like this blog a lot better. I write everything here first, then, maybe that day, maybe the next, when I have a spare moment, I copy it over to the other one. The other blog gets very much the second-rate treatment. You wanna know why? Of course you do.

This one is better looking.

That's it. It isn't easier to use, or faster, and it doesn't get any more hits (both get about as many hits as a Canadian rap star*). It's just better looking.

It's amazing to me when I think about all the little biases and predilections I have based solely on looks. I mean, of course I married my wife because she is attractive (read: "a hottie"), but I am actually realizing that I choose even the most mundane things based on looks. I'm talking gas stations. I'm talking breakfast cereal. And which checkout lane I queue up at. And which freakin' cart I put my two pounds of frozen ground beef in. I come home from the grocery store and my wife (the hottie) asks me how much I paid for that brand of peanut butter, and I have no idea, but I know what it looked like sitting there on the shelf, gloriously more beautiful than the other everyday peanut butters sitting around it. I'm a product of my American culture, I suppose, but I can't blame it all on that. I'm a superficial bastard, I admit it. Mostly.

It must be hard-wired into us, to some extent. My son, three years old, is the same way. He likes good looking people and shuns people who are (by his standards, which are as subjective as anybody else's) less-than-attractive. I don't want to foster this, but (and this is the brutally honest, sticking-my-neck-out-there part) deep down inside of me, part of me applauds it! Why is that? Why is it that I take pride in thinking that my friends are attractive? That my kids and my wife are good-looking? That my car is snazzy, my batteries are shiny, and that I eat a sexy freakin' brand of peanut butter? Is the answer as simple as that I feel more attractive myself if I am surrounded by attractive things?

...is it?

(long, thoughtful pause)

You know, I don't think so. At least not entirely. This might be very republican of me, but I think at our base, we all, to some degree, yearn for beauty. I think it is a simple, pure, elemental desire. We all like what is nice, what is pretty, what is colorful, what is sexy. The fact that that desire has been used as a ploy, as a mask to sell us everything from soft drinks to Presidents doesn't mean that the desire itself is bad. It just means humans are good at bastardizing everything we touch. Preferring beauty doesn't make us superficial. Preferring beauty, seeking it, is the elemental soil that makes humans hope, that convinces us there is a heaven, that drives us to create. Preferring beauty makes us wish for the better, and work for it. Preferring beauty makes us more than human.

All right, that was a bit melodramatic. I apologize. I got caught up in the moment. But I'll tell you something I'd be loathe to admit at a party, in a world full of cynical, hard-nosed realists like I usually am myself:

I believe it.

* don't ask me how I know that