Just a single topic here.. tonight I had a conversation with a friend I haven't heard from for awhile, and while talking about politics, I had an idea .. well, really, an enlightenment. He commented on how a certain politician is impressive because they're 50% honest, much more honest than typical. And it got me to thinking, why are politicians so notoriously unable to talk straight? There are plenty of small reasons, but a new one came into my mind, and combined with the obvious ones, it seems to cover all the ways in which they're deceitful. To explain in detail, let's first consider a family. Some of us, probably most, have people in their family who say or do things we disagree with. Often, it might be a certain someone who our parents tell us NOT TO TALK POLITICS WITH, or DON'T REMIND HIM OF THE WAR, or DON'T MENTION HER WIG, or something like that. In sum, families are complex, and many of them have people who, for the sake of peace, you just need to steer clear of certain topics. Heck, after you age a bit, go through college, get opinions, and all that, you might become one of these in your family. If you don't even have the faintest degree of this in your family, your friends probably tell you about this kind of stuff in theirs. If not, you're not living in my universe, so how are you reading my blog? Anyway, society is your family, on a larger scale. If you even mention vietnam to Uncle Fred, you're going to lose, there's no way out of it. If you remind Aunt Francis that she always gets you lost when she's driving the family somewhere, the fireworks will go on for hours, so even if she will get you lost and you know it, it's better to just suffer it. Society is full of damaged people, and part of politics, no doubt, is avoid stepping on areas where entire groups of people are broken. As I've often been told, there are times where, even when you're right, you're wrong. It generalizes pretty well. There are a lot of little taboos in subcultures that people can easily step on inadvertently, especially when what they say is listened to by a whole nation. And I, dear reader, am probably stepping on a few taboos just mentioning this..

Hmm.. I guess I have a *little* more to say. Lots of blogging today, heh. It's funny how, because of symbolism (I imagine), a lot of middle eastern arabs have swords on them. I guess that's just part of their culture... but it does leave me to wonder, where do all those swords come from? If they

• are* symbolic, do they still have swordsmiths over there, or is there some

kind of underground trade going on between Renaissance fest people here and sword-loving middle-eastern Arabs over there? Maybe that's why RenFest people always seem to be able to afford so much weird stuff.. the actual festivals are a loss leader and a fun diversion from the REAL WORK of making swords for the middle east.. Oops! There's another few taboos broken!

So, Amazon sent me a video game thing I wanted, and, I only assume this is a video game thing, because I've never gotten it from any other amazon order and I've never ordered a video game accessory from Amazon before, there was a packet of listerine breath strips in the packing materials. Thanks, Amazon! I guess you're making a statement :) Wow, I wonder if I've broken enough taboos without touching the ground to merit me a 1-up?

Ok, finally a disclaimer. I know that not all arabs have swords, and I'm not going to claim that I know the fine details of which countries consider swords symbolic things to carry around, and which don't. I have nothing particular against arabs.