I’ve procrastinated long enough. Since I posted the reason I moved back to Tucson, I should post how it turned out.

The Great Experiment has ended in failure. The girl I moved back to try to be with — a girl I’ve called a close friend for years and a lover for part of that time — has decided she doesn’t want me.

I’m not really sure what to write here. I could explain why she doesn’t want me, but I don’t know her reasons, and I’m not sure she does either. I could use my blog to lash out at her, but I don’t think there’s any point in that.

My emotions have been roiling the last two weeks. The anger and depression have faded somewhat, leaving two different emotions: humiliation that I was rejected so quickly (and perhaps so predictably) by someone I cared about so deeply… and pity — both for myself and for her — that something I hoped would be great never really got a chance.

In the midst of discovering all of this, I also found out that the “other” Tucson girl I like had begun a serious relationship with one of my friends. Well… let’s just say that didn’t help my mental state at the time. I can’t blame her, though — I had my chance and I blew it, choosing to focus instead on a girl who, as it turned out, didn’t want me. She seems happy, though, and so I’ll be happy for her.

Still, here I am once again in Tucson with all of my close friends quietly content in their long-term relationships and myself on the outside looking in. Isn’t that mostly why I left in the first place? What’s my Plan now?

The final nominees for the 2006 Web Cartoonists’ Choice Awards were announced earlier this month, and Shaenon Garrity is in line for several awards. Narbonic is nominated for Outstanding Comic and Outstanding Writer (a category she won last year. One of the other strips in the Garrity webcomic empire, Smithson, is nominated for Outstanding Use of Infinite Canvas and Outstanding Superhero/Action Comic.

Phil and Kaja Foglio, who contributed the introduction and a 10-page backup story to Narbonic, vol. 3, face Shaenon in the Outstanding Comic category. Their Girl Genius was nominated for that and two other awards.

Some of my other favorite webcomics were nominated, too: Order of the Stick for Outstanding Gaming Comic, Toothpaste for Dinner for Outstanding Single-Panel Comic, and The Perry Bible Fellowship in four categories.

By the way, I just found out that Shaenon is NOT going to San Diego Comic-Con this year, so vol. 3 won’t be for sale there as far as I know. She is the latest of several friends to back out of Nerd Prom this year. I’m still debating whether to go, and this further tips the scales against it.

The plans are made and the tickets are purchased.

This Saturday, the Loft is hosting what it calls The Best Damn Joss Whedon Double Feature Ever. The Arizona Browncoats are holding a screening of Serenity with proceeds going to charity. After that are two episodes of Buffy: “Hush” and the Musical episode, with lyrics appearing onscreen. It’s billed as “Tucson’s first-ever Buffy Sing-A-Long,” which is a bit like saying “Tucson’s first-ever javelina ballet.”

Earlier that afternoon, Bookmans is hosting a pre-show shindig where prizes of store credit will be awarded to the winners of trivia and costume contests.

Unsurprisingly, once I suggested it, most of my nerd friends are into this. Surprisingly, so is James, pending babysitter availability. He’s seen all of Firefly but missed the movie. He’s escaping before the sing-a-long, though.

I’m curious how I’ll react to all of this. I’m a Whedon fan who tends to dislike other, more intense fans. While I was away for a year, my friends picked up the habit of bursting into Buffy Musical numbers at the drop of a hat. When they do, I’m tempted to beat them with rocks. (In a loving way.)

Now amplify that to 300 people…?

I should probably leave the rocks at home.

Even in my addled mental state, Colbert’s interview with Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) a few days ago stood out as something special.

I’m not sure why conservatives — especially social conservatives — keep accepting interviews with Stewart and Colbert. They usually come out looking like fools.

The full interview (including the discussion of Westmoreland’s total lack of law-making activity) can be seen here.

You wouldn’t know it by recent posts, but there are times on this blog when months pass without readers leaving a comment, so this Pearls Before Swine strip hits pretty close to home. (Thanks to The Comics Curmudgeon for sending the funny to my RSS reader.)

I posted a short note a couple of days ago that spoke vaguely of the awful things happening in my life right now, then deleted it because I realized the sole result of leaving it up was to make people worry about me. I hate it when bloggers and LiveJournallers pull that shit.

I’ll post something here eventually, without going into too much detail, because I’m still trying to get my head around recent events. But you know the best thing that happened this week? Transcontinental sent 500+ copies of Narbonic, vol. 3 to my apartment complex, rather than 300 to Shaenon and 200 to me, as contractually agreed and pre-paid. Since Shaenon’s the one who fulfills the Paypal book orders, I’ll have to go to the trouble of shipping a dozen boxes to San Francisco and convincing the printing company to reimburse me.

Like I said, that was the BEST thing that happened to me this week. More later.

In the upper left corner of my screen is former Virginia governor Mark Warner delivering his lunchtime/campaign speech live at YearlyKos (actually he’s just finished and been replaced by a pretty-funny Bush impersonator). I got up at 8am on a Saturday just to watch Howard Dean’s morning keynote address. And now I’m blogging about it. Clearly there is something seriously wrong with me.

Following Dean’s speech, I switched over to the Framing the Debate panel featuring George Lakoff and Jim Derych, author of Confessions of a Former Dittohead. The panel was carried on CSPAN as well, as it turns out, which I had DVRed for later viewing. I figured CSPAN would cover the main ballroom featuring the star attractions, not the smaller, half-empty Room 3, but I was wrong.

Anyway, this seems like a good time to talk about Confessions, which I finished last weekend. It’s an easy, conversational read, and a dedicated reader can blow through it in an afternoon. It’s kinda like a really long blog post. Two blog posts, actually — the first half recounts Derych’s transformation from conservative dittohead to liberal activist, and the second half covers ways to talk to other dittoheads and get past the “right-wing reasoning chips” in their heads.

In the latter respect, the book isn’t as useful as I’d hoped. On several topics in part 2, Derych essentially throws his hands up and says “I don’t know how to engage a dittohead on this.” His own conversion was initiated by a college roommate who hid his homosexuality from Derych out of fear and a female friend who shared the story of her abortion at age 15. (Her story is retold in the book.) Both events shattered his illusions about the types of people who are gay or have abortions, but other dittoheads may not be lucky enough to know people like them.

For all that, it’s still an interesting read, and I discovered some things I didn’t know. For example, Derych explains how one rock of conservative belief — “tax cuts raise revenue, and Reagan proved it” — is false, but based on enough truth to mislead. Reagan lowered taxes but also revamped the tax code to abolish most deductions. Money that used to go into loss-generating activities for tax purposes were redirected into the economy. More recently, Dubya’s tax cuts came without similar reforms — by Bush’s own (probably optimistic) estimations, only 17% of his tax cuts have been made up in new revenue. Hence, $3 trillion in new debt and counting.

There’s one very minor story in the book that jumped out at me: after becoming a liberal and volunteering for Kerry, Derych went on a local conservative radio show.

Reason be damned, right-wingers insisted that Kerry’s having brought an 8mm handicam with him to Vietnam was somehow proof of his phony and ambitious nature. I thought this didn’t make a lick of sense. So when Mike asked me, “Why else would he have brought a camera to Vietnam?” I responded, “My parents gave me a video camera to take with me to college in Knoxville. It’s not uncommon for kids to have a camera with them during their college years!” Mike was unimpressed. “There’s a big difference between Knoxville and Vietnam, Jim.” To which I replied, “You’re right, Mike! There’s a hell of a lot more stuff to see in Vietnam!”

What strikes me about this exchange is that Ron gave me the same story during the 2004 election, as proof of Kerry’s phony and ambitious nature. And he was even a Kerry supporter! I read the blogs pretty copiously at the time, and this was the first I’d ever heard that criticism. Ron didn’t have time to really follow the news, yet the meme filtered through to him.

How does that work? What mechanisms launch these memes right past people like me yet still circulate to the apolitical masses? Is it the fault of the so-called liberal media? Or is it really as simple as dittoheads spreading the word in their spare time, one co-worker or brother-in-law at a time?

Whatever it is, it’s killing Democrats in national elections. We saw the same thing in 2000 with Gore’s supposed claim that he invented the Internet — something he never actually said. Perhaps the rise of the liberal blogs will start spreading new memes to the masses, but until then, we can Frame the Debate all we like, and it won’t make a difference in presidential races.

After almost a month of blessed absence, today I finally heard creaking again from the apartment upstairs. I’m not sure what happened in the meantime — I thought maybe the 500-pound occupants had fallen off their pogo sticks and broken their necks. But since I never noticed a horrible smell, I assume there is an unfortunately less exotic explanation: they moved out, and the apartment stood unoccupied for several weeks before new tenants moved in.

Ah well. At least the new neighbors seem less heavy-footed and nocturnal, even if I can still hear them. (UPDATE: Heh, never mind about that non-nocturnal part.)

Stewart takes Gamblin’ Bill Bennett to the woodshed over gay marriage on this interview broadcast a few days ago:

I was tempted to go to the YearlyKos convention this week. Vegas is only a six-hour drive, after all, and the guest list is pretty enticing if you’re a liberal political junkie like me: Howard Dean, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Joseph Wilson, Wesley Clark, Michael Schiavo… not to mention almost every blogger I read.

But in the end, I couldn’t justify spending hundreds of dollars to attend when I wouldn’t know anyone there and nobody there would know me. My blog has a readership of roughly eight people, and I know all of them personally.

Fortunately, Air America Radio has decided to broadcast the entire convention online at a price of only $10. So I’ll be able to watch, listen, and not interact at all — just like I was really there!

The only downside? I won’t be able to sneak out for a lapdance at Sapphire. Ah well.

UPDATE: C-SPAN is also covering the convention.