Wish I May

This month has really lived up to its name for me.  At the start of it, I was full of ambition.  I May do this, I May do that.  I'm not sure how successful I was at pushing things from the May to the Did column.  I did finally read Homo Deus by Sapiens author Yuval Noah Harari which had been on my list for several months.  The topic of the book is the impending domination and subordination of humanity by an amortal, superiorly engineered successor species to homo sapiens fashioned by the elite members of our current species from themselves.   The trajectory of 50 years or so in which this would occur per Harari seems to me to be optimistic in light of news of the acceleration of global warming (also brought to us courtesy of our elite!) as reported to the world by a panel of 91 climate scientists last fall, making the notion of a cybernetically and genomically superior superspecies as a threat to humanity almost cute in its quaintness.  Good luck with the charred and depleted burning turd ball of a planet we're about to bequeath you, bionic overlords!  You deserve each other!

At the start of the month, after reading a string of exhilarating articles on CurrentAffairs.org, I thought "I may subscribe to this damn thing."  I did.

After several weeks of boiling and pouring water for coffee from a saucepan following the demise of the second cheap tea kettle in 3 years, I thought I'm either going to invest in quality water boiling paraphernalia or give up coffee forever.  I'm still pouring water out of the pan, but I swear I'm going to order a kettle. Maybe in June.

I had several ideas for blog posts that I may or may not ever get to.   (For all that matters, I may finish this one or I may not.  We may never know.)  For instance, I've been flirting with the idea of writing specifically about a commonly discussed notion of some writers / voters / focus group participants / acquaintances that they will be disappointed if the democratic nominee is not a woman.  As a shorthand, I'll call this faction (those who prefer a female nominee) Gender Voters as a particular case of what could be called Identity Voting for those supporting or seeking to support a candidate on any specific demographic or identity-centered basis.  Given that barring a change to the constitution Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not meet the age requirement for the presidency until 2024, I have to face facts that I am strongly decided on a candidate whose non-womanly status places me in a position of rooting for disappointment for a significant segment of what I hope will be allies by the time of the general election.*  I've touched upon this before, but frankly the predicament this past week of Theresa May (no pun intended) in the UK, who is after all the second woman Prime Minister after Margaret Thatcher in the 80's, has reminded me with a great deal of poignancy that gender alone does not automatically confer feminist priorities, compassion, skill or wisdom on a leader.  I don't doubt that May's gender tempered her incumbency-- I could even be persuaded that things would be even worse if she were a man as I'm sure her successor if he's Tory will soon enough amply demonstrate-- but may we be chastened by the actual examples from history against promoting candidates on narrow bases without assurance that their greatest strengths will lead us out of our current predicament and into the light of better days rather than deeper into the mire.  If Hillary Clinton had won in 2016, I do not doubt her 2-term presidency would be a success (and most importantly, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch would still be mere gleams in the eyes of the Federalist Society instead of the nails sealing the coffin on Roe v Wade if not this republic's judiciary), but could we or the planet endure 8 more years of neoliberal status quo before daring to dream of a progressive president?   On the other hand, on closer consideration, I've decided I don't want to "mansplain" so I may not write about this topic after all. (Keep in mind: if you hear of any wagering on how long I can go without broaching the topic again, I may want in on the action.)

To complement the Mays, I have a list of Mayn'ts:

• I mayn't yet be over obsessing about presidential politics (to the exclusion of all other categories yet) (a year before the primaries yet), and I mayn't be completely sorry about that.
• I mayn't foster a habit of mindfulness outside of discussions about how I really ought to foster a habit of mindfulness
• I mayn't forgo watching Real Time with Bill Maher on a regular basis even though he appears to have forgotten there's a left to the left of center left in his roster of guests and moreover fully transcended the line into old man crankiness himself.  (It helps to mix it up a little with Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas.)
• I mayn't give up lo-sugar ice cream novelties for dessert.
• I mayn't stop adding to the list of Mays before transferring legacy items to the list of Dids 

To that final point,  even though the hurt of AT&T killing FilmStruck after purchasing Time Warner last year still stings,  I may risk my heart being broken again by subscribing to Criterion Collection before the end of the month.   I understand they are featuring the films of Anna Biller.  Then again the mere thought that I may do it, may in the meantime give me something to live for.

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* I'm sorry but Elizabeth Warren does not go far enough in her policies given current circumstances.  There is an actual progressive running, in case you hadn't noticed.  I'm not ready to settle, but if I must settle after the primaries, she is the one among the likely alternatives that I would hope I'd be settling for.