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A bit of 4th of July revelry has brought up discussions of both the best and the worst that this small town has to offer.  While Mount Vernon is a safe, small town with a relatively low cost of living, it lacks some basics that people of greater… worldliness… regard as necessities.

There is no great book or music store to speak of.  We have the very quaint Paragraphs bookstore downtown, and there is the Kenyon College bookstore in nearby Gambier, but both of them lack the kind of massive, reeking edifice quality that the big B&N or Borders stores offer… an inviting atmosphere where you can sit and peruse books, enjoy a decent cup of coffee, and relax.  Both of our local outlets are a little more clinical (Kenyon) or too small (Paragraphs).  While the essential work of buying a book is satisfied by the stock at the store itself or the vast ordering capabilities of the Internet, it’s just not the kind of experience I crave.

I’ve already blogged about music sales in this town, but it’s worth mentioning again.  There is nowhere within 40 miles to buy music other than Wal Mart.  Wal Mart often sells edited versions of records I want to buy.  Yes, because some of the music I want contains profanity, or songs about drug use, or murder, or not liking Wal Mart.  Avril Lavigne, a cute little slice of Americana; James Blunt, the Irish drug-toking pop singer with the nasal-y voice; and many other, all edited.  Mainly this is because the radio songs have been edited, and we don’t want our kids going to the store and buying a record where their favorite, FCC white-washed songs include the words that they themselves say everyday…  Makes me angry.  Yes, I could just order music over the internet, download it from iTunes, etc, but I actually like the experience of purchasing a physical object that I can enjoy very soon after in my car or at home, and not have to wait.  It also stimulates the local economy and adds to the sales tax revenue of the community.

Yes, I argue for paying more taxes.  Shoot me.

Small-minded racism and classism is kind of endemic here.  As I have pointed out religiously, the status quo rules here.  It is a town of white people, overwhelmingly Christian, and set in their ways.  This homogeneous character lends itself to predictability, an under-riding sense of social responsibility, and at least a somewhat positive disdain of laziness, but it also breeds fear, intolerance, and simple foot-in-mouth syndrome.  A young friend of my wife’s little brother recently made an offhandedly racist comment without even realizing it.  He is a teenager, and his political and social views are not totally developed (more a carbon-copy of his father’s Rush Limbaugh Republicanism that doesn’t really breed the kind of balanced discourse, open investigation and criticism that I prefer in educated life), but the simplicity of his statements were kind of shocking.  My boss, at the bakery, who claims he is not a racist, has that same in-bred quality that my father has, where disdain of the black stereotype is the standard, and to bandy about the terminology is natural but sometimes shameful.  “I don’t hate black people, but… they should get off their asses and get jobs!”

It’s a generalization that the small person cannot see, because of their smallness.  They refuse to understand the larger picture, the history and economics behind the social situation we have now.  They want to dismiss 400 years of American political and economic history, declare the victory of the civil rights movement (because, of course, that’s great and they’re not racists), and say that everyone is equal now–go get a job.  I know it’s not that easy.  Despite the current economic state of being, it is not as easy for a black person to get a job as a white guy, like me.  The ingrained racist tendencies manifest in more places than the baker or my father would admit.  They’ll hire the black kid to work in the shop, and his nickname will become “Black Matt” to differentiate him from “Fat Matt,” who is white.  The owner of the shop will tell racist jokes and make comments at lunchtime.  “Did you hear that in Cleveland, 80% of the crime is black on black?… So, to help them out, we sent a truckload of guns, grenades, and knives and handed them out for free.”  Would you keep working there?  Nah.  Me neither.

There’s more, but those are some of the endemic problems I see every day.  One of them is a selfish, quality of life issue, but one that would improve the lot of everyone around, and the other is a general problem that isn’t just small-town provincialism, but a deeper problem in the white American psyche.  I’ll talk more on that one later.

Some many years ago, there was a contest to design the logo for Palladium Books‘ website.  I submitted an entry that I cooked up, and didn’t win.  At least, I didn’t win the initial contest.  I apparently got runner-up, because my logo appeared on the site less than a year later, and has remained there ever since.  I think that was 1998, about 10 years ago.  I just remembered, I mailed them the file on a 3.5″ floppy.  Har.

Palladium Books represents a weird middle class of gaming, having grown up with licenses for Robotech and TMNT role-playing games, and then creating its own brand, revolving around the most famous title, RIFTS.  In the early 1990’s, it was a pretty innovative game, a mash-up of fantasy and sci-fi in a far-flung, post-apocalyptic Earth.  My friends and I played it quite a bit through high school, but it was a clunky system and any decision to go back to it was met with some trepidation.  “How long is this fight going to last?  I have a date tomorrow.”

While D&D and White Wolf have undergone some high-profile makeovers in the last few years, and D&D getting ready for its FOURTH edition, if you don’t count the intermediate 3.1, 3.5, etc, but Palladium has remained relatively stable… or stagnant.  It seems to putter along with roughly the same stable of writers and artists, bashing out a few books every year and continuing to put out a sizable sourcebook/magazine every month or so, called The Rifter.  I guess they’re filling a niche and managing to make money doing it, so more power to them.

I popped back over to their site tonight, partly out of curiosity, and their site is still pretty much exactly the same as it always was.  Same logo.  They’ve even done some creative triage with photoshop to make it look decent on a white background.  It’s not bad, but for me, it’s a little embarrassing.  I think I’m going to call them this week and see if they want some help.  It’s not going to be an easy project, since they have a store, a forum, and heaps of old press releases.  I guess, if I have to, the company is in Michigan, so I can drive up there and see them, if this gets serious.  Wish me luck, tolerance, and good will.

It’s kind of amazing how much unemployment has ruined my creativity.  I used to be this overflowing font of imagination, but in the last year, I’ve barely painted, not really thought up any ideas for stories or games, and haven’t actually sat down to play RPGs with my friends at all.

I used to think that work was the problem.  Too much work drained the well, and I’d need a few days off to recover, gain that inspiration back, and paint or create.  Now, I’m starting to think it’s not like that at all.  Having a daily purpose throws the rest of my life into perspective.  Knowing that at least 8 hours of my life is going to be eaten up by some mundane task makes me take greater advantage of the time I’m not working.  I might be failing at the Samuel Johnson ideal, instead I am someone who wants to work so that he can afford to do the other things he wants to.

This all came up when I was talking to a friend last night.  She’s a super go-getter, running herself ragged from 5AM to 11PM every day, just to suck up as much of life as she can.  She goes to the gym, to work, out with friends, out with more friends, gets some sushi, does some work from home, gets a late cocktail, and finally crashes out around midnight, almost every day.  She travels a lot, too.  She seems to think that NYC would be the ideal place to live and she says she’s looking for jobs there, too.

Since I’ve been unemployed, I’ve been kind of a lump.  I sit and stare at the internet job postings for a few hours every day, play some warcraft, idly peruse blogs, and sometimes try to study or learn something.  I’ve made a few improvements, in that I’m becoming a fine baker and all, but it’s really a small trophy for a year of sloth.  I’m looking forward to getting back to work, full time.  When I think about it, I start looking for my paintbrushes again.

This last weekend, I managed to sell out of nearly all my products at the Farmers Market on the Square in Mount Vernon.  It was a good experience and I look forward to trying it out again, when we get back from vacation.

Today, I have kind of petered out on studying and have just been getting things done around and outside the house.  I dropped the TV off for repairs, got a new lawnmower blade, bought some grillin’ supplies and a few other odds and ends.  When I’m not doing that, I’m sweating and filling out my federal security clearance forms.  Financial reporting always gets me down.  Ugh.

That’s it for now.  If you get a call from the feds, asking about me, tell them I’m Captain America.