The Apple Coda

2011-10-06T00:24:00.004-04:00

This Concludes the Apple Coda

The king is dead. Long live the King.

2008-10-24T23:31:00.003-04:00

Sarah Palin is God

The genius of the Republican Party is occasionally a hard thing to figure. But sometimes, a figure emerges, a single strand of wheat glimpsed from the throngs of chafe and socialism. A blinding light reflected against a sea darkened by the reeds. A white blue-collared Christian point of order against a vast sea of unwash. A Hockey Mom, against a rink around the collards.

The Divine Sarah, so many Victorian journalists proclaimed, not knowing they were fluffing the carpet for the 21st century.

CNN makes it so.

2008-09-26T15:18:00.001-04:00

The Funniest Election

In a way, it is. I mean, the fact the Sarah Palin really is the Vice Presidential candidate to a 72ish old man with scary skin cancer is both confusing and hysterically funny. But it's only funny in the way that the first day of the sun changing course and rising in the west would be funny. In the long run, I don't know what to say, except I'm glad this particular type of political insanity seems to be contained in America, for now.

Worthless conservative idiot Rod Dreher (via Andrew Sullivan, who still bothers to read these people regularly) says:

She makes George W. Bush sound like Cicero.

I'm reminded of when Nixon picked Agnew to be his Vice President, and how he was still able to win, even though almost everyone, including most Republicans, considered it the craziest thing to ever happen in American politics. Check out this ad from the 1968 campaign. Now, I'm not going to draw a historical comparison here, because hontestly I think the Palin pick is much worse than Agnew, and the Republican party brand is shit right now. But also realize that Agnew was a big part of the reason why the cultural conservatives flocked to the Republican brand, why the culture wars have dominated American politics for the last 40 years, and why using logic and reason to argue politics is still considered to be bad form.

In Which Bill Returns (Shortly) For a (Month and a Half) Ravag

2008-09-23T15:59:00.011-04:00

There Will Be Blood

Hi, I'm Bill. American Politics, as many of you may know, is a bloodsport. Desperate. Passionate. Profound. Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here.

We're a few days off from the first debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, and several weeks into a General Election Campaign that is so chaotic and unpredictable that no doubt we'll be wondering who will be proclaimed the next President of the United States for many weeks after the the dust has settled and the blood has coagulated from the events of November 4th.

During the next few weeks, many legions will be raised, and many talents will be spent before the bloodbath that now must surely ensue, when we finally reach that sacred date In The Year of Our Lord, 2008. Novermber 4th. A date that shall live on in infamy. A date in which many of us in our evangelical communites will turn their lonely eyes to our great country and ask, "what turmoil now hath man wroth?"

It is to our cable news media pundits that our eyes will then turn. To explain. And I fully now intend to return to their number. Since 2006, I've been but a paltry observer: always listening, caring not. But I now return, for a month and a half, to dole out my finest and most astute political wisdom and reasoned commentary, to this political election, in the year 2008.

I will remain humble and only offer the most objective and discernable political observations during this season of blood and carnage. No new events, no matter how tiny to the untrained eye, will escaple my all-knowing sight, no wrinkles in the dress of our nation's narrative will avoid the pulse of my tender analytical touch.

You are in good hands with Bill Duckwing. Tune in on Friday night, where I will be observing, and indeed, commenting, on the greatest ravaging and dismemberment modern American political campaigning has ever seen. Right here at the Apple Coda!

2006-11-06T21:36:00.001-05:00

Predictions on the Midterms

House: I'm not going to bother with calling any individual races, but of course I'll go with the convention wisdom and predict that the house will end up under Democratic control. My breakdown: 223 (D), 212 (R).

The Senate, I'll assume that the seats polled this year as "Safe" seats are in fact "Safe" and just pick the winners for the races most people have put in the "tossup" category:

Rhode Island
Chafee (R) - 51%
Whitehouse (D) - 49%

The Islanders really like Chafee, and don't hate Bush quite enough to make Chafee pay for it.

Tennessee
Corker (R) - 54%
Ford (D) - 46%

Ford was a very good candidate, and I keep wanting to place this in the "win" category, but if you're consistenly trailing in the polls by a 8-12 point margin -it's kinda like being a Republican and believing Santorum could conceivably eck out a win in Pennslyvania.

Virginia
Webb (D) - 52%
Allen (R) - 48%

Virgina's politics have changed. I figure if Tim Kaine can win a governorship in Virginia against Jerry Kilgore, a guy that had a less than checkered past, then Webb should certainly beat George Allen, a guy who has done everything possible to destroy his canidacy. My only cavet is that Allen was an insanely popular politician in Virginia for the last decade or so, especially when he was Governor of Virginia. When Webb won the the primary the initial polls showed Allen ahead about 20 points. Webb will still squeak by here.

Montana
Tester (D) - 50.5%
Burns (R) - 49.5%

Okay, this is me totally ignoring the momentum shift of the past week and just going with my gut. Truth is, I don't see how a man like Conrad Burns could possibly beat a guy like Jon Tester. It breaks the laws of humanity, or something. Still, this race probably won't be decided until Wednesday.

Missouri
Talent (R) - 53%
McCaskill (D) - 47%

I know the Democrats have improved the GOTV machinery in this state in particular, but I don't think it's going to be a straight Democratic sweep with the tossups, and I think Missouri is still a solid Republican state and most of them are probably going to okay with keeping Talent in charge.

Ohio
Brown (D) - 56%
DeWine (R) - 44%

Um...DeWine certainly doesn't inspire Republicans to vote, thats for sure. Ohio, a huge blue collar state, is obviously really ticked off at the 'Pubs this year, and the burning effigies of Republican House members displayed on so many grass lawns all over the state really drive home the... well at least that's what the polls seem to show at this point. I don't have a reason not to believe Brown will win this when every poll has Brown over DeWine by at least 8 points.

Pennslyvania
Casey (D) - 59%
Santorum (R) - 41%

I'm approaching almost a 20 point gap here. There is no way, short of massive Diebold fraud taking place in Pennslyvania, that Santorum can win re-election.

New Jersey
Menendez (D) - 53%
Kean (R) - 47%

This race will tighten up, with Kean probably winning a majority of the undecideds tomorrow. But Menedez has polled consistantly ahead of Kean through the campaign, and I don't think New Jersey Republicans have the machinery in place to pull this off for Kean. I think if the Republicans had any idea this race could've been competitive a year ago the race would've been a lot more interesting.

Maryland
Steele (R) - 51%
Cardin (D) - 49%

Honestly, I think Steele just ran a better campaign here -and he would probably beat Cardin overwhelmingly if this wasn't also a referendum on Iraq and G.W. Bush. Maryland is still a Democratic stonghold, but I think the issue here is kind of the same problem with why Dem voters in RI are uncomfortable with ousting Chafee. I think that "blue states" generally tend to vote far more meritocratically, rather than toe a party line. While I do think the Bush thing tempers that sentiment down quite a bit, I still think Steele is going to win a narrow victory here. (I also think that Republican Erlich is going to be re-elected as Governor here, don't aske me why).

Arizona
Kyl (R) - 51%
Penderson (D) - 49%

There has been a surge in the past week for Penderson, enough that many strategists are thinking this could be the surprise swing state of the election. While I agree that the momentum shift is astonishing here, I don't really see any reason for the shift, and wouldn't be surprised if the latest polls are outliers. I do think there is some Dem mo' going on here, but I think it's probably too sudden and too much of a shock for Democrats to capitalize here.

FINAL SENATE TALLY: 52 (R) - 46 (D) - 2 (I -Lieberman and Sanders, who will vote with the Dems)

Gov'ner Tally - 27 (D), 23 (R)

What'cha think?

Update: Weirdly enough, Bob Novak has the exact same picks for the Senate races that I have here. He even throws in the oddly similar comparison of Ohio voters being a sort of GOP lynch mob this time around. I'll just chalk it up to Bob's optimism and my extreme pessimism, and hope that my picks are tainted by misgivings caused by the 2004 elections.

Update Numero 2: Cardin projected to win over Steele -with 0% of the votes counted so far. My first bad pick (sniff...no, not really).

Update 3: O'Malley beats Ehrlich for Governor of Maryland, and Whitehouse is projected to beat Chafee for the RI Senate seat -fuck (no, not really...) Chafee, you should've turned blue, man. Our loss.

2006-10-16T19:53:00.000-04:00

Enjoy the Rush, But Seriously Start Planning Ahead for the Next Two Years

I've been following the politics with much more interest lately with the coming election and all. And I really hate being the contrarian here, but maybe the Democrats winning both branches of Congress isn't quite the best idea right now. Not with Bush in the White House at least.

I know, I know. Like I said, it seems needlessly contrarian, probably even insane. I wouldn't say that it's conclusion that I have set in stone or anything. But looking at the most likely scenario, I'm guessing that Democrats would probably pick up bare majorities in both the House and the Senate, and suddenly Bush becomes MR. VETO, picking apart legislation passed by the Democratic Congress and pretty much shitting all over it. And by giving him a chance to be an open critic for the American People against an opposing party that he feels is not acting in the People's Best Interest, I start getting flashbacks of Caesar vs. the Roman Senate dancing in my head. And seriously, I hate acid flashbacks.

Seriously, do you think it's inconceivable that Bush will just flat out veto everything? And Fox News and everyone else jumping on the bandwagon and turning Bush's flat out stubbornness into some sort of some sort of protectorate of the American people?

I'm sorry -I know the Democrats are really riding the momentum wave here. But waves eventually break, and the idea that we have to really be prepared for what lies ahead I think is obvious. I think W's obvious gift is that he is able to skirt compromise through sheer whining. I mean, if the wave's big enough to win Super Majorities in Congress, hey, I'll eat my hat. I think at the very least we'll lose the conservative Bush bashers, as they'll again rouse themselves to defend Bush now that the Republican party won't be the only factor in the equation to fuck shit up.

And I know that there are already tons of people and think tanks already banging their heads together and coming up with dozens of solutions to handling a slim Congressional Democratic majority for the next two years until the 2008 Election. To all of those proposals I offer only two suggestions. 1. Keep it fucking consistent, and 2. You guys have absolutely no idea what you're going to be up against. I mean, of course you know, but no, you really don't. The fact remains that, despite the vocal opposition against the government on things like the Iraq War and the change in public perception, it remains true that we have not had a say in our own government for over 5 years. In that time, we've been having nifty debates about things like our government's right to torture prisoners in secret detention camps, and wiretapping American citizens without warrants.

Given that, and assuming Democrats even do win the majority, I think it'd only be natural for Democrats will re-enter the Washington political machine with shaky and inexperienced hands. Still, better learn to still those hands quickly, guys.

2006-07-19T22:35:00.000-04:00

The First Veto

I haven't blogged in about a month or so. Call it taking a break or just plain old "taking it easy" relaxation, but I have to tell you that I'm absolutely floored by the fact that we have a President of the United States exercising his first veto on funding research that could actually prolong and eliminate the suffering of countless numbers of his constituents, possibly within his own lifetime.

Some people have really left their humanity at the coat check during this past generation or so.

Richard Nixon, unquestionably one of the most loathsome Presidents in the previous generation, still felt a need to "throw a bone" to the public every once in awhile. After all, he did sign the bill that allowed young people (18+) to vote, and after all it was his administration that offered expanded welfare to those in need through the introduction of food stamps and the like. That we still considered the impeachment of Richard Nixon for his crimes a serious option, despite those bones that he threw at us, for me speaks of a far saner country than the one I live in presently.

In Bush, we have a man who is obviously far more interested in playing out a shallow revenge drama and in flipping off his political enemies than he is in furthering any agenda of progress for humanity or our country. I was once on the fence between whether this man's moral vacancy was due to his own lack of empathy, or if he had in happy ignorance allowed himself to be a token of the right-wing's goals and ideals, whatever those could possibly be. His first veto, done against the protests of such progressives as Nancy Reagan, whose husband was both the vanguard of this new right wing craziness and also its victim, and Orrin Hatch, who I won't even attempt to caricature here, can suggest nothing other than this.

He's just an asshole.

2006-06-08T19:03:00.002-04:00

Spoofing

I add to my blogroll the adorable Scrutator, which might be the most horribly facile website content I've ever seen, but still...just the blantant right wing spoofing is pretty cute.

I won't claim to be one of the originators of right wing spoofing, but I was definitely doing it well before it became the epidemic it's become. Nowadays, things are so weird in the blog community that actual left wing commenters will spoof right wing talking points in order to troll popular left wing websites. The point for any of this is anyone's guess. The comments made to posts at Scrutator, for instance, leave behind a clusterfuck of confused and angry fake confrontation, mostly made to mock...well, your guess is as good as mine...most likely people like me who are actually interested in why sites like these spring up in the first place...

I bring this up, because I was going to do a spoof Apple Coda template for a day or so, because of the Zarqawi thingy. I was planning to rename the blog, "CLAPPING FOR MORE PICTURES OF CORPSES!!" and yes, present every possible link and picture of Zarqawi's corpse, and other corpse crazy pics from Rotten, or Ogrish. I decided against it, not from tact, but from laziness -it would've taken me a few hours to revamp the site for what woud obviously only last a day or so at the most. You're welcome.

I have done things like this before. I did do a very special communist Apple Coda, with my avatar behind makeshift mspainted bars, and I affected a obvious and stilted writing style for posts. Also for some reason a very brief David Hasselboff pictoral with pink and light purple backgrounds. Don't ask me why!

But as you'll probably not take note of, I haven't spoofed the Bush administration in a very long time. And the reason for this, of course, is that when I do revert back into the silly conservative spoof, I do it in an attempt to tackle issues that might actually be controversial. See the estate tax riff a couple posts below, although who the fuck knows why that was controversial.

I mean, anyone attempting to defend Bush without any reservations these days is immediately laughed off as a spoof. Still, the scru's are, in their own way, kinda neat...

2006-06-07T21:54:00.000-04:00

What the Hell is Populism, Anyway???

I know this seems like a facetious question, given the three question marks and the "what's love got to do with it?" like vibe to the title, but I'm kinda mystified by idea of populism, except as a political tool to work over those who believe that nations inherently have a permanent silent majority.

I mean, I like John Tester, the challanger to Conrad Burns for the Senate seat in Montana. But in what way exactly is he a "populist candidate?" -Do the views of organic farmers represent the majority of Americans?? Are we all former organic famers in the same sort of mystical Americana dream, like the cowboy or the western outlaw??

I mean, really. The previous historic populist benchmarks include Teddy Roosevelt, a nut-job conversationalist, and William Jennings Bryan, a Jesus freak who still commands the respect of legions of the intellectually challanged intelligent design enthusiasts.

I mean, can't we liberals just get on the side of honesty this time around and admit that practicality and common sense just don't register to the majority? Why do we have to pretend?

2006-06-06T21:22:00.002-04:00

Being Taxed 2 Death...

I'll be one of the first to admit that being taxed by this government is not the funniest things to laff about in this crude sin-cursed world. I mean, if it comes to a nuke-fest with Iran, I'd, at the very least, would like a little extra moolah to put a down payment on some sort of make-shift fallout shelter in somebody's attic where I could store a smorgasborg of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Cloud soup. I could then spend most of my evenings painstakingly painting images of those soup cans, place them in a New York Soho gallery, and pay a house band with my excess earnings to reinvent rock n roll.

But the only problem with this vision, assuming that the Liberal Senate does indeed reject the current proposal to void the estate tax once and for all, is that -given the fact that I have completely reinvented art, and also rock n' roll, is that my children will indeed receive less of my assets once I do indeed pass on. And if that does indeed happen, I mean ...fuck that. I'm totally fucking selling that piece of shit house band I financed with my own money down the river, and I'm also taking those soup can paintings, which have totally fucking reinvented modern fucking art, to fucking Montana. Where my canvasses will provide plenty of insulation for the mail bombs I plan to use to voice my opposition to the opposition to the personal freedom the estate tax attempts to overcome.

We shall overcome, my brothers and sisters. I was thinking that maybe Republicans had got it all wrong...calling it the "death tax" is way too un-evocative. Instead, maybe we should call it the "shit tax." Because while death may create an unpleasant odour to the uninitiated, I'll be the first to admit that exposed human feces takes a skill to ignore far beyond the ranks of the uninitiated.

But remember, my brothers. If we do decide to call the estate tax the "shit tax" -I totally own the rights to that. TM, dudes, TM. And please don't forget to unload your assets to me in your wills...

2006-06-05T21:39:00.000-04:00

Tales of Grizzly Adventure

Now, I'm not the most dedicated hip hop adventurer, goodness knows, but I picked up the Gnarls Barkley on a whim the other day, and while I think it's a fantastic album that pretty much deserves all the accolates it's been getting, I was a bit unnerved to note that there is a track on the album in which the singer, Cee Low, does do an impersonation of Dracula ("The Boogie Monster"). I note this only because the only hip hop album I've bought and enjoyed in recent years was 2003's OutKast album, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which was also another excellent album that I probably allowed the hot laser eye in my CD play to burn a few freaking holes into it whilst dancing to with headphones alone in my apartment. And my point is that indeed The Love Below disc also has a song about Dracula ("Dracula's Wedding"). And I guess I figured that twice in one millennia is too much of a coincidence to ignore.

And by no means do I want to generalize. But, after acknowledging that hip-hop bands like Gnarls Barkley basically get enjoy exposure in Europe in order to placate thirty-something white urban male professionals who believe that the hip-hop golden age ended with the death of Public Enemy, I still have to express concern over the vampire boogey shit in modern hip hop. Not that I really think that it's a trend, but in my very limited knowledge of contempoary hip-hop, I'm still a little bothered by the notion that maybe the RIAA missed the boat and anchored their salaries against the nutty idea that modern yuppies equate Ann Rice and boogiemen with "edgy."

And I'm not claiming to be the ultimate arbitor of cool musical discretion or anything like that, either. I completely and profoundly rescind those medals, goodness knows. And goodness knows, I've been a fine and upstanding model of the upright citizens brigade lately, goodness knows, and I haven't taken the Lord's Name in Vain lately, and I wipe my brow with my hand from sweat, knowing that it will never cool me, and that when my Lord calls me my brow with be crowned by both bloody thorns, but also by a rising feverish temperature...

I was acosted by a grizzly bear the other day. It stood on it's hind legs and waved a paw in my line of sight, but all the same never looking at me directly in middle of the thicket. I know not where it went. And I am always concerned as to what event will influence the fluctuation of my internal body temperature. But I shall not want. Father, no...not you, grizzly bear....I commend my spirit. But I mean, c'mon, look at the mess you're making...think of the trashmen who will occupy this space in the morning...you need to think of the others before yourself...father....

2006-03-27T22:08:00.000-05:00

Jesus Fucking Christ, George Mason

I only caught part of the first half and all of the second of the game last night against UConn, but jeez louise if I can't figure out this outcome.

Wow. The game really had it all -GMU would be 12 points behind or something and you'd be like that's all to be expected, and then you'd start to fix dinner and relax a bit. But then GMU would be all like fuck that, and then went ahead and pulled all these 3-pointers out of their asses, and then they'd be like fuck that shit again, and go ahead and totally out-rebound these UConn guys who should normally be able take every ball that drops from any distance higher than their arm's length, and then minutes later you're burning your steak on the stovetop because you're screaming your ass off at the TV screen. Because for some stupid reason, you're actually witnessing David vs. Goliath in real time in the real world on your fucking TV set.

It was the most incredible, most emotional game I've ever seen in my entire life. It was like watching "Hoosiers" without the need to add in any dramatic bullshit to get the tear ducts working.

The movie version of this is going to fucking kick ass. They should call it "Masons." Holy fuck.

I mean, fucking George Mason University. Maybe the fact that they're local serves up love on my appreciation of them, but really, the only reason I know that these guys exist is because I went to the Patriots Gymnasium this one time to watch the Barenaked Ladies play. This was years ago. I remember that Train was also there. Also, Five for Fighting. You cannot make this shit up. The "Superman" song from Five fo Fi was kinda cool because the guy did it all solo with his guitar, and 9/11 had occured only a few months ago. Still, it was a piece of shit all ages concert where beer was served in an enclosed beer prison where strangers would pay 8 dollars to drink a small plastic cup of Budwiser and then stare and wink at each other and pretend they weren't closet alcoholics. Other than that, I really have no idea why I would care enough to think about George Mason University or think anything of it at all.

But after last night, I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to forget them again.

I mean, seriously...

2006-03-22T10:58:00.000-05:00

A Robot’s Christmas in Wales

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant bleating of the noises I sometimes hear a moment before I shut myself off, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the flamebots.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her “son” J.I.M. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, J.I.M. and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green glass of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first bleet from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the noise grew louder.

"Beep!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a shrieking and buzzing massive old computer system with a barrage of blinking lights. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always shut himself off there after midday dinner with draped cloth over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "BEEP BEEP WHIRRRRRRR!!!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"DOOP CHK DEEP," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong. "Cli-chuck Whirr-whirr-whir EEEEEEEEEEEEE," said Mr. Prothero, “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."

There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting. "Beep boop tweet," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box. "Chuch-chuch," J.I.M. said. "Blop BLeep." "Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall robots in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the flamebots turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, J.I.M.’s “Aunt”, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. J.I.M. and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall flamebots in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Hello…I am a Pyrotechnic Robotic Organism Trained for Hazardous Exploration and Rational Observation, or P.R.O.T.H.E.R.O. How may I be of service?"

Millions of years ago, before the Age of Robots, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when the humans sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before sleek spaceships could go the speed of light, when they rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a newly manufactured robot says: "Wee-bobooboboboboobobbobobo-BEEPBEEP."

"Bloop beeb boopboop," I say. "chchcuck whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

"Beep?"

"chck WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-chic-chuch."

"Bweep boop weet?"

"WHIRRRR-WHIRRRR."

"WHIRRRRRRRRRRR."

"WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR."

"Boop Beep Boo?"

"Chichic-chuck-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."

"ER-beep beep?"

"bloop…….bloop……….bloop……..bloop ...."

"beep……..beep…………beep………beeoop...."

"Che-chik zoot zoot."

"Zoot zoot?"

"Beee….whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr "WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRR"

"Beep." "Beep."

"Bawagabawaga….zzzzzzwwwwwwwweetetetetee."

"Beep."

"Szooo beep boop WEE TEE TEET?"

"WE ARE HERE TO PROTECT AND SERVE MANKIND."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old droid about to be dismantled always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale newer prototypes, with faux pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, not beeping, down to the forlorn sea, to determine if a trip to the factory for robot upgrades were necessary, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my imaginary nostrils (oh to be like the human!), when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come another robot of the same model and type of myself, with a pink-topped memory stick storing pictures of a young human smoking in the street, and the violet past of a damaged light sensor, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my interior heatsink cooling fan and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his heatsink cooling fan and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling facets, their processors overheated with heat, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we stared at plastic turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the “Uncles” sat in front of the fire, loosened all bolts with a cresent wrench, put their large shiny hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and turned themselves off. “Mothers”, “aunts” and “sisters” scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. “Auntie Bessie”, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and stared at some elderberry wine. The dog had died out centuries ago. “Auntie Dosie” had to be content to stare upon three aspirins, but “Auntie Hannah”, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, beeping like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the “Uncles” jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles processing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and crush dates between my steel fingers and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on J.I.M. and D.A.N. and J.A.C.K. and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.

"Bweeto…BEEPBEEPBEEP!"

"Bloop Beep?"

"Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

"Beep?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.

"Whirrrrrrrr."

"Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr."

"Whirrrrrrrrrrr…bee-beep." Or we walked on the white shore. "Beep?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast ancient skeletons of deceased dogs, with flasks round their necks, were up to us by their tormented “owners”, baying nothing. We returned home through the poor streets where only a few beta versions fumbled with bare steel fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and beeped after us, their noises fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of cargo space convoys out in the whirling bay. And then, at “tea” the recovered “Uncles” would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. “Auntie Hannah” laced her “tea” with “rum”, because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted robots wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "Beep? Beep beep?"

"Chik," J.A.C.K. said, "Beep Beep Beep." One, two three, and we began to emitting sounds, our noises high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry noise, like the noise of something who has not spoken for a long time, joined our bleeting: a small, dry, eggshell noise from the other side of the door: a small dry noise through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.

"Beeeeeeeeeep bloop," J.I.M. said.

"Beeeeeeeeeeeep blooooop," D.A.N. said, who was always reading.

"Whiiiiiiirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr," J.A.C.K. said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An “uncle” opened fiddle.mp3, a cousin beeped a MIDI version of "Cherry Ripe," and another “uncle” MIDIed "Drake's Drum." Checking my internal thermostat, it appeared very warm in the little house. “Auntie Hannah”, who had moved on to examining a parsnip wine, MIDIed a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said an ancient human’s heart was like a Bird's Nest; whatever the hell that meant; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the bleeting sounds rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I opened some maintainance programs to the close and holy darkness, and then I shut myself off.

2006-03-14T22:01:00.000-05:00

How Much Lower Can Bush's Poll Numbers Sink?

You know, even though Harry Belafonte is a total fucking liberal asshole who should be excommunicated from the United States of America because he talks treason whenever he's in Cuba or some fucking country like Venezuala or whatever fucking country it is assholes like Harry Belefonte come from, I still sure love me some calypso.

"How low can you go?"

Yeah, that's right! I'll be doing the calypso all over this place tonight, boys and gals. Shoot me a guess -he's been in the 30's since, like since forever, right? Do you think he'd Nixon out in the 20's, or even further than that? Isn't this post a little weird, when you think about it? Isn't it strange that in one post, presumably jovial about Bush's low poll numbers, I was able to take a stronger and way more offensive strike at Harry Belefonte, for absolutely no reason whatsoever?

Isn't that something...

2006-03-07T21:39:00.000-05:00

Was my last post actually in November?

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick! That isn't good!

I know I said I wasn't going to come back, but I don't think anything I've said about where this site was going ended up being the truth.

The house of cards seems to have some super glue keeping the loose joints together. So, well that sucks, so we're going to have to do some serious thinking about that.

So yeah, I'm back for 2006.

2005-11-22T17:26:00.000-05:00

A House of Cards

Two and a half years ago, the start of the Iraq War and incidentally the start of my blog, I would have never in a million years believed that things would have flipped out and gone overboard quite like they have. The House of Cards has simply toppled over, and while I have to pinch myself now to get over the apparent easiness and suddenness of the toppling. At the same time, I realize that we all always knew the essential truth all along with these guys.

Despite the fact I've posted about a number of things over the years, I think this has always been a shoot the shit political blog. An experiment, sure, but basically political in bent. It was conceived in anger. We were going to war in Iraq, and both me and my girlfriend were getting tired of me screaming about every stupid thing going on with Bush and his administration on a daily basis. So I figured, hey, maybe I can vent online somewhere? So this became the spot for it.

At the time, I guess I felt that our side, the Democratic party, liberalism, progressivism, whatever the hell you wanted to call it, was the proverbial shot and wounded deer, waiting for the bear to tear it's head off and, I don't know, drink the blood from it's head like it was a chalice...or something. Sorry, but I'm not very good with metaphors. My thing was to take the wounded deer, and imagine it as this thing laying in wait. If you crossed the line, sniffed too much glue on the way over, and decided to be stupid enough to do a little victory dance over the deer carcass, the deer somehow has the ability to become this rapid crazy resurrected thing with the power the bite big heads off.

That was the theory. I mean, I wasn't intentionally trying to take down the administration or attempt to convince anyone what to do or believe. My goal was always to attempt to give a little humor and mirth back to the people who believe in this country, but became disillusioned and cynical in the post 9/11 world.

Another thing. We'd be much better off if we took this Democrat/Republican - Liberal/Conservative thing-o way less seriously. Being a partisan is a part of being human, for some reason. I understand that. But they're just clubs. I'm not orthodox enough in my thinking to call myself a Democrat. But I sure liked being in the club the last few years. I guess if I really had to work out my politcs I'd be libertarian who also happens to be a partisan Democrat. I can count on one hand the number of times I've voted for a Republican, and I can also say the majority of the time it was because it was an uncontested seat. But while I can find myself agreeing in theory with 75% of another libertarian Republican's positions (say, like John Cole of Balloon Juice), I'll still end up voting Democrat down the line while he votes Republican down the line, and then we end up with no practical congruence in opinion whatsoever. That's why our parties suck.

But for our leaders, it all comes down to money. Conservatives say they have principles, and I do believe them to some extent. Though I think the partisanship factors in a great deal more than they'd ever admit. But this administration is so corrupt, and has absolutely no principles, not even conservative ones, except for money. Conservatives pundits like Andrew Sullivan and (well, there's more, but I can't think of any more off the top of my head) have no finger stuck in this honey pot, so they're understandably nervous about this administration.

This will be my last post here for the Apple Coda. It's been a fun ride, but I think it's served my purpose. When it comes to David and Goliath match-ups, I generally only get involved when it seems like David's going to lose big. I bought a domain over the summer, which I'll link here when I get it hosted and have some content up. I also got picked up for a group political blog awhile ago, so I'll have an outlet to write on politics when or if I feel a point should be made.

Goodbye, and enjoy the rest of the show.

2005-11-08T21:06:00.000-05:00

The Problem with Jerry Kilgore...

Simply the fact that he was not conservative enough for the voters of Virginia. Hey, Virginia is a Red State, and all Jerry Kilgore had to do was throw a little bit, just a wee little bit, I mean, after all...we not asking much from our politicians here in the Ol' Dominion, but a little blood splatter, a bit of red meat tossed to the meat and potatoes conservatives here. Is that too much to fucking ask, Kilgore?

I've been reading the forums over at Free Republic all day for insight on this pathetic fucking loss. They have it right, man. The problem, of course, was that Kilgore tried a little too hard to please the moderates. And given the truly disingenuious campaign of Tim Kaine, proclaiming himself a God-fearing conservative, when course he is a just another heartstrings tugging liberal, is just too painful to ignore. I understand the Virginia's confusion, of course. When I heard all of the lies put forth out of Tim Kaine's lying, liberal, poop mouth, I of course planted my banner for Kaine in the mistaken belief that the Democratic party had finially turned the corner. I was, sadly, wrong...

I feel really sorry about that. Well, here's to four more years of fucking liberal hell, I guess. I'll drink to that...

2005-10-31T10:10:00.000-05:00

Bush Picks Alito for Supreme Court

Looks like he finally keeled over to the conservatives. Fight time!

2005-10-13T09:35:00.000-04:00

Laffo!

Richard Cohen and the Washington Post says what needs to be done!

Here you go.

Fitzgerald, go back to Chicago already!

Late Edit: Actually, the funny thing about this is that I was reading my Post to work today on the Metro, stumbled over the Cohen column, and figured this was going to be passed around the net as one of the stupidest opinion columns in a least the last couple of months. The first blog I usually check is Atrios in the morning, and sure enough, at 9 in the morning he had already named Cohen the Wanker of the Day. Cool!

2005-10-07T00:02:00.000-04:00

Go Go, October!

And not only because my birthday happens to be this month (I turn 29 on the 14th).

The Bush administration seems to be literally falling apart. I usually hold my guns for the most part, but wow. It seems to be happening so fast I don't even know what to think.

The Delay-Rove-Reed-Norquist-Etc. connections. The looming indictments from Fitzgerald. The plummeting approval ratings (37% WTF).

I think this whole thing has just been so corrupt and interconnected for so long, that it's the proverbial house of cards. You take away just one of the cards and throw it in Federal prison, and...

I have no idea what's going to happen over the next few weeks, but you can bet I'm elated that it looks like were finally going to have fucking accountability in this country again.

2005-10-03T21:21:00.000-04:00

Thoughts on Harriet Miers

Being the good political blogger, I've spent most of my time today thinking about Harriet Miers, and how her nomination to the SCOTUS could mark a turning point now and forever on the furture of precent in our legal system, and what our lower courts will now have to respect on precedent the SCOTUS now decides to frame on things like abortion, corporations, and other very contentious political issues threatening to tear our country apart like thousands of razor sharp claws, just tearing and ripping apart the very fabric of our nation, like a nation of buzzards with locust heads ripping with their talons, their teeth, into a single loose sheet of cheesecloth, and then drawing and quartering scattering said cheesecloth into all of the directions of the void.

And then I saw that the Lamb had opened the seventh seal, and I heard one of the four creatures say to me, with a voice of thunder, "Come and see..."

And behold! I came, and I saw...

Actually, I was listening to a bit of John Denver while I was writing this, and the larger issue on my mind right now is that John Denver really did have an obsession with all that rural shit, laffo? I mean, he never really wrote a song about Cambridge, MA, did he? All this shit about Colorado and fuckin' West Virginia, of all places. Kinda makes one think, doesn't it?

2005-09-19T22:11:00.000-04:00

Having Fun in DC!

For those who live in the DC area and have never heard of Lyndon Larouche...uh, I don't know, man. I guess you probably don't live in the DC area.

Frankly, I'm astonished by how little attention the Larouche cult gets played nationally. We still like to make fun of Scientologists, and the Mormon church, and I guess a few other cults nationally, but overall, our attention and derision towards cults in America is at a pathetically low tide from our peak in the 70's. Remember the Moonies, or the Hare Krishnas? I do.

But Lyndon LaRouche really is an amazing thing. He's headquartered in Leesburg, VA, and he never allows us to forget it. Nominally a Democrat, he's also nominally a felon, having served time for attempting to avoid paying his taxes. His cult is full of unbelievably naive leftists, who, having never heard of him, become entranced by his calls to hate Bush and Cheney, and love...Lyndon LaRouche. His last national headline was during last year's Democratic primaries, when one of his cultists asked Howard Dean what he thought of Lyndon LaRouche. I don't know why, I guess he was hoping Dean was going to tap the Larouche club and name LL the VP right there. Dean shot back, "Lyndon Larouche, isn't he still in jail?"

Anyway, I was accosted by at least 20 Larouchites and a choir of at least 10 or so more outside of the Farragut North Station this evening. Traveling up the escalator, my first thought was that it was just a simple but very off-key choir with no overt political overtures. Glancing to my left, I saw the long unrolled corpse-white sheet of paper held up before them, and the blue and red scrawled hand-painted slogans written upon it, and I knew instantly that they were in league with Lyndon LaRouche.

Suddenly, they pounced. Twenty hands outstretched before me, each holding more than twenty dozen newsletters. Screaming at me. "Hell is here!" "The Bird Has Flown the Coop!" "Bush is the Devil!"

I knocked their arms away, in an almost futile and desperate to make my way to the curb to cross the street. A girl tries to entice one of my commuters next to me.

"Hey, have you heard that the world economy is collapsing?"

"Seems to be doing all right to me..." he says in a condescending tone. In my head, I think of what I would like to say to that, but get distracted by a high-pitched scream as we leave the curb to cross the street.

"CHENEY GOES TO HELL!!!!!" some cultist screams, in his best Charlton Heston impression, and it truly sounds infernal, like he had just opened a portal to Hell somewhere on the corner behind us, to whine at us for not picking up one of those goddamned newsletters.

I won't go into too much detail beyond this encounter to convince you that not only is Lyndon LaRouche insane, but his followers are the most aggressive, annoying propaganda pushers in the DC area. And I mean, this is DC, where any lunatic with an agenda can go shout their diatribes 200 feet away from the White House.

They want to build some sort of trans-continental land bridge, for instance. Their reasons, of course, are obscure and academic. They also really want to convert our monetary system to the gold standard, because the system we now have in place will collapse and destroy us all if we don't. They also hate the Jews, which figures as a prime element in their theories on why nothing but the gold standard will suffice, because it's...oh, fuck it.

I'll also note that, as a somewhat loyal Democrat, I found myself voting Republican for the first time in a major political race thanks to Lyndon Larouche. Republican Sen. John Warner's last Senate race in Virginia found him up against some Libertarian, and a LaRouche Democrat. I held my nose and voted for John Warner. Thanks, Lyndon LaRouche!

2005-09-14T20:38:00.000-04:00

Revisiting the Soap Box

I actually spent quite a bit of time in the first couple of months of my blog quoting Charlie Daniels and his soapbox. I do sort of understand his politics, in a way. My politics, until I got into college at least, were mostly rooted in populism. I made the assumption that governments are established to serve the common people, and that if the people can be kept informed by a fair media, democracy can only facilitate a responsible and fair-minded government.

Despite his apparant insanity, Charlie Daniels' politics has always been rooted in populism, which is why I do sometimes sympathize with his batshit insane rantings. He was a fun sort of read, back in 2003 when we were merely trying to figure out whether to praise or dump on the Dixie Chicks.

And I wasn't the only person to pick up on this. Democratic Underground wrote a crazy ass 15 page letter to urge Charlie Daniels to change his stripes. I'm not going to dig the link up for you, but basically, they picked up on Charlie's "man of the people" posturing, and urged him that if he really meant that, he should become a Democrat.

Despite being an avid reader of the Soapbox for a couple of months, I honestly haven't read it in over 2 years. The reason I revisited it was because I was reading an interview that Tom Lehrer did with the Onion, basically saying that our politics had become too terrible for satire. Lehrer said that he wanted Bush vaporized, not satirized, as if he was such a detestable person that satirization of him would almost be a homage. I guess I should point out here that Lehrer is an old man now, and he had decided that Nixon was too much for satire thirty years ago, too. He preferred lampooning guys like Eisenhower, someone I don't think I've ever really contemplated before, besides the fact that I know that he was the President at one point.

Generally, he makes the point that it is impossible to lampoon evil actions or evil people. You can poke fun at John Wayne, because he was representing a machismo that, if you don't just totally blow it off, can be subtly knocked for the silliness it really is. Lampooning Hitler, or the Holocaust, is pretty much impossible. In a way, a lampoon is a glamorization, because you're inadvertantly drawing attention to it. You're saying -"Hey, guys! Look at this stupid thing!" -in a clever enough way to get peoples attention. Lehrer didn't think that there was anything particularly interesting about a comic saying, "Hey, look at this! A Fucking Portal into the Soul of Hell!"

While I don't agree with his opinion, he may be right. After all, he's well into his seventies now, probably one of the most brilliant satirists of the last hundred years, and insanely intelligent. It pains me now to write a satirical post here on Bush anymore, because there really isn't much to poke fun at, and most of the people who would 'get it' really aren't in a joking mood about President Bush anymore. A better target is John Roberts, because more people seem to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. For satire to be persuasive, it has to antagonize people who generally would be on your side anyway. If you're a liberal, your satire has to mildly antagonize other liberals. For conservatives, well, I'm not really sure if conservative satire actually exists. But best of luck, guys!

Anyway, I liked doing satire on Charlie, because I think he falls a bit more on the stupid side, rather than the evil side of being. He was also a very easy target to work my chops on. Still, no matter what quantity of vomit he pours over onto the pages he has written, I figure he's got a heart. A sick, palpitationous artery-clogged heart. But still a heart.

Anyway, I guess the biggest reason why I checked up on the Soapbox, was because I was thinking, hey, maybe Charlie Daniels, a target of quite a bit of satire on the net, would say something unpredictable.

And well, even by Lehrer's definition, satire is quite alive and well in America today.

“It’s his fault!! It’s her fault!! It’s their fault. The President should have acted sooner, the Governor should have called out the National Guard, the Mayor should have given the order to evacuate the city.” The big scramble is on as officials, celebrities and publicity hungry politicians, aided by a mercenary media scramble for face time and photo ops. I have just one thing to say. You people disgust me beyond description. Who cares whose fault it is? What difference does it make to a crippled old lady stranded in the attic of a house with water up to the eaves? Do you think your snide and totally unproductive comments make any impression to a man with five children to feed and not even knowing where even their next sip of clean water is coming from? There’ll be plenty of time down the road for you people to preen and posture in front of the cameras and tell the world how compassionate you are and how you think heads should roll for one flimsy reason or another But no!!! You’d rather try to make political hay than to unite with the rest of us and help the situation.

I don't even know what he's talking about. But thank you, Charlie Daniels. You will always warm my heart, so long as you can acknowledge that there will be plenty of time in the aftermath to preen and posture in front of the cameras!

2005-09-12T21:54:00.000-04:00

G. Gordon Liddy Was Really Cool

You'll notice I use the past tense, there. Was, not is. It's a pretty important distinction, because God knows what the hell happened to G. Gordon Liddy since Watergate. For all I know, he could be a balding senile communist distributing literature to college students out in Oklahoma, or maybe your typical couch potato who replays the Kennedy assassination over and over again on his VCR. Back...and to the left.

But I don't want to cheapen Liddy's coolness by indulging in mindless conjecture. My point is that nothing he could possibly be doing now would make a heap of a world of difference to tarnish the image and ideals he represented in the 1970's. Liddy was Cool.

I met him just a few months after my tour in Vietnam, which probably dates me back to 1968. I was the war correspondent for the District Examiner at the time, which along with the Washington Post and the Washington Star, was one of the three top daily newspapers in the city. To go off on a tangent, I remember dispatching this piece over the wire for the DE a few weeks before I was shipped back to the states:

A Question of When

By: William Duckwing

SAIGON: As people become more and more
uncomfortable with a war that seems to have
been extended beyond anyone's wildest
imaginations, soldiers too have begun to ask
difficult questions. Difficult questions that nobody
in authority seems to have an answer for. Saigon
has become a city of people looking for answers.

"Where are we going home?" one distraught soldier
asked a couple walking home on the street.

"When are we going home?" another soldier asked
them a little further down the road.

"When are we going home?"

If they could, they'd probably ask President Johnson,
and his successor, the same thing.
'When?' is big question of the moment. Not only for the
United States, but for the World.

I was glad G. Gordon Liddy was hanging out around airport the night I returned to DC, otherwise I might never have gotten my head straightened out.

He approached me innocently enough. I was standing at the baggage claim, when he just sort of slinked over to me and asked me, "Do you like crackers?"

Nervous, I asked him to repeat the question.

"Do you like crackers?"

"I don't know, I guess it depends of the kind of cracker." I said

"Because, you know, 'The Capitol Scene' gives them out for free, you know? Crackers..." The Capitol Scene was one of the restaurants located inside the airport.

"Hey," he said, patting down my arm. "How'd you like to go grab a drink over at The Capitol Scene?" He raised his famous thick eyebrows at me, I guess in an attempt to convince me.

So I got my baggage and we headed over the restaurant. We developed a quick friendship, over a couple of beers many bowls of crackers. He confided in me that he only drank beer, as liquor was "something the assholes drank."

We maintained our friendship over the Watergate scandal, despite the fact that my journalism won the District Examiner a Pulitzer, and Liddy ended up doing some time in the pokey.

To refresh you memory, here are some headlines of stories I wrote for the Examiner:

"Strange Apparitions Appear Inside the Watergate, Arrests and Bugs"

"Secret Slush Fund Analogous to an 'Administrative Game of Chess'"

"Nixon Sacrifices Queen for the Mate. That's what we call a 'Checkmate,' Washington Post."

"Oh, What the Hell? Et tu, Dean?"

In fact, you've probably already figured it out if you've read this far, if you remember that movie they made about my impossible struggle to get a fair and balanced account of what the Watergate scandal essentially boiled down to. To get my account, I used an anonymous source, a man with high connections in the FBI and the White House, that I had originally noted as "MF" for "my friend," but Managing Editor Arthur Abernathy, of the District Examiner, began calling him "Green Door," after the popular Marilyn Chambers movie, "Behind the Green Door," just to spite me. And the name just kinda stuck. The fact is that I never would have been able to get the stories I did without the confirmations from Green Door. He was the most important source in getting the Watergate story, but I've kept his secret now for over 30 years because I believe in source confidentially. But anyway, yeah, Green Door was G. Gordon Liddy.

Sorry, G.

Edit: Sorry, I really just phoned this in at the end. One of the reasons I don't blog that often is that writing things like this, as short as they are, often consume my entire evening. I guess I could hold it and write it out over a couple of days, but I'm impatient when I have an idea, and I think that would kind of defeat the purpose of a blog. Blogs are susposed to be spontaneous, right?

2005-09-09T20:07:00.000-04:00

The Ultra-Ergomatic Ergomagical Ergomystical Mega-Comfort Keyboard Solar System!

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Our special robot moderator at our corporate headquarters in Mind-Fuck Control Alpha, Easter Island, will establish a micro-speed laser mind connection with you, the user of the Mega-Comfort Keyboard, to guide your own hands in designing the Ultimate Ergonomic Keyboard of your dreams. Never experience mental anguish again, only the simple "coarse" manual strain of working with your own hands!

The Ultra-Ergomatic Ergomagical Ergomystical Mega-Comfort Keyboard Solar System is endorsed by the Institutional Agency of Ergonomcial Needs and Growth, and features the ability to:

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-
The Ultra-Ergomatic Ergomagical Ergomystical Mega-Comfort Keyboard Solar System -$569, but soon to be mandatory for all new computer systems (ask your computer dealer for more information).

2005-09-07T22:44:00.000-04:00

I Missed The Boat On Something, Goddammit!!

And if I'm going to get to bottom of it, I'd bet my left nut it has something to do with Justification for the War in Iraq, I dare say!

Christopher Hitchens, our official Katrina Aftermath correspondent, from the Ivory Tower.

2005-09-01T22:32:00.000-04:00

Seriously, Just Donate.

Here you go. Just take your pick. If you have cash to spare, my first hit would be the American Red Cross, but seriously, go nuts. Salvation Army, too. Whatever. Just go nuts.

Seriously, click on the picture on the top of my blog, and just donate some money

I have a couple of thoughts on this horrible situation, which are personal, but I really don't want you to read them unless you donate.

So I'm going to make it hard for you.

Did that work? No, I guess my pathetic attempt to blow you away with my clown picture didn't work either (I meant it to be about 200 times bigger that it appears on my blog). I don't know. I can't even really articulate how I feel about the situation in New Orleans this week. I just feel very sad.

UPDATE: HERE TOO

2005-08-10T00:21:00.000-04:00

Strange Things In Washington That Nobody Really Picked Up On

One of the interesting things about blogging for a couple of years is that, if you post continuously for awhile, and then stop every once in awhile, for some reason, you will still get any number of historically minded hits for why Dick Gephardt was being attacked by Rush Limbaugh a couple of years ago. I have no idea why anybody would care about that now, since Gephardt's now long gone, but Google tells me otherwise.

Maybe I should rename this blog, "Blog O' History" and be done with it.

Anyway, it looks like this piece in the Metro section last Friday, in which torch burner Harry Bonilla wanted to rename 16th St. NW "Ronald Reagan Blvd." -got totally missed in the blogosphere. Shocked, seriously. I mean, given half the landmarks in the Nation's capitol have already been memorialized on behalf of our greatest President, I expected a little bit more chutzpah from our leadership. I would've just gone ahead and propsed to rename Pennslyvania Avenue after the Great Communicator, so that "1600 Pennslyvania Ave." would simply be known as "The House That Reagan Built, On the Boulevard That Happens to Be Named After The Greatest President That Hath Ever Liveth, Or Else Shall Ever Liveth, That Pisseth Inst Holy Denouement Uponst The Sixteenth Street Northwest Of Our Pathetic Nation's Capitol..."

Is this going too far? Rep. Tom Davis (R) thinks so, but fuck him. I certainly hope this isn't going to far for our Congressmen... God speed, Mr. Bonilla, God Speed!

2005-07-19T18:08:00.000-04:00

What the Hell, Let's Speculate

Given all of the rampant speculation of Bush's choice to take Justice O'Connor's seat on the Supreme Court, I thought I'd do a little bit of last minute speculation of my own. Sure, you'll probably already know and chide me for being wrong by the time you read this, but what the hell.

Right now the money is or isn't on supreme contender Edith Brown Clement. But most are now thinking that she's a big red herring, and that her name's being flown around right now like a Boeing 767 to stall and deflect attention away from the real nominee. Yeah, that whole day's work researching the herring is sure going to put a lot of liberals off when the nominee is disclosed in about 2 and a half hours!

But I'll take a bite. Clement is not 100% certain, I'll wager that. True, she might be a "stealth" conservative judicial activist, but given she's gone on record saying she believes in a constitutional right to privacy, and also mentioned the unhappy fact that she respects the legality of Roe, the fact that the right wingers haven't pounced all over her possible nomination like rabid wolves makes me a bit uneasy. Yeah, maybe she is a herring.

We also got moderate Edward Prado, another one of Bush's appointee's to the wonderful and fabulous Fifth Circut Court of Appeals. I'll allow this if Bush is feeling frisky in a "don't mess with Texas, you Jesus Freaks!" kinda way. Do you see this happening? Well, do you, punk? No, you don't.

So let's take a look at the Hellqueen of Evil from the Deep Fifth Circut, Edith Jones. I'm not kidding. What a super fun fucking war that would be. I'm really not sure what her judicial philosophy is, but her very outspoken politics take a page from the very well known treatise on political theory, "I Hate Humanity." This is the option Bush should choose if he wants to do away with the filibuster on judicial nominees forever. Dems filibuster, then kablooie! Nukes ahoy.

I'll also mention Alberto Gonzales, I guess, and he has a chance, just because he's such a flunky. I'll also mention Michael Luttig, who got an endorsement and more betting money placed on Fox News, and John Roberts, who seems like another good conservative "stealth" candidate due to some amount of bipartisan support.

But if I were a betting man, which I am, I'd pick Edith Jones. She would be a perfect candidate to placate Dobson and the religious elite, since there's no doubt where she'll fall on gay rights and abortion, which should encourage a huge turnout for the religious right for the 2006 elections. It also allows him to engineer a big showdown in the Senate. Once the nuclear option is unleashed, Democrats are done for. Bush won't ever have to listen to their whining and carping again.

Any takers?

Edit (7:45PM): I guess I lose. AP says it's John Roberts. But one question -why the fucking leak? Given the amount of confirmations today, I reserve my right to speculate.

2005-07-06T11:02:00.000-04:00

Draft Ed Prado

Since O'Connor resigned, the Supreme Court vacancy has been pretty heavy on my mind. But I think if Bush nominated this guy, some of my worries would go away.

Bush nominated Ed Prado for the Fifth Circut a couple of years ago, where we won 97 votes in the Senate, and is generally a moderate and an all around intelligent guy. Seeing him take O'Connors place on the Supreme Court would make me far more confortable if Bush decided to put in a shitheel like Gonzales or Prissy Owen once Rehnquist finally bites the dust.

Can this possibly happen? Will Bush finally reach for bipartisanship in the Senate and save it from another year of arm twisting and gnashing of teeth? Well, no. Not in a million light years. I imagine Bush would nominate Dobson is he had the votes, and probably has Dobson's identical twin hidden somewhere dark and secret to cue up for the bullpen for when Rehnquist retires.

2005-07-05T21:47:00.000-04:00

Happy Fourth of July Everybody!

Hey, I just want to take the time out of my busy schedule and remind everyone to have a really happy and super Fourth of July. Happy Fourth of July, Everybody!

I spent most of the day a couple of airports. Eight hours, actually, for a 1 and a half hour flight. So I was reading this little thing from an old issue of Granta, maybe from 2002 or so I'm not sure, and the theme for the issue was "What We Think of America."

That was kinda stumpy for me. I mean, what does the rest of the World think about America? Actually, maybe the really interesting question would be, what did the World think about America in 2002?

Overall, what the World thought about America in 2002 was a pretty mixed bag o' nuts. I guess you could say that, if you were an American picking through them, there would be some nuts you'd like and some nuts you wouldn't. Now I like most nuts, I think. Actually, I think I like most nuts. But you might be a little more selective, so I urge you to be open-minded when I summarize the thoughts of a few of the nuts to give you a better idea of what the World thought about America in 2002.

Amit Chaduhri (India): When we were young, we used to like to be the cowboys when playing cowboys and indians. Heh, teh irony. Isn't that a cute little anecdote?

Harold Pinter (Britain): The only people in America nowadays that care about my work are elite liberal snobs serching for relevence in this horrible fucking world. Fuck America.

Everyone else (the World): McDonalds. Oh, and Wal-mart. Hershey's chocolate. Hollywood. And the Gap.

Honestly, I really do like Granta, especially for the way they incorporate pictures with their stories and articles. It was interesting to see how much of other people's experience of American culture revolved around exposure to our corporate products and our movies, though. Not surprising, to say the least, but still interesting.

2005-06-17T19:52:00.000-04:00

Pick This Album Up

I heard the song "Me and My Arrow" by Harry Nilsson the other day. The obvious Beatles influnence on the song intrigued me, so I looked it up online, and found out it was from a soundtrack to an aminated 70's tv show for kids called "The Point!" I recognized the album cover art. I had this album when I was a kid, and probably hadn't listened to it in over 20 years.

It's a great album. Before, I vaguely recognized Nilsson's name but tended to lump him in with all the other classic rock B-listers. But now I look forward to exploring some of his late sixties work. He definitely wrote some trippy songs.

2005-06-10T18:29:00.000-04:00

Hey! Let's Hang Out!

Yesterday, I was walking around the college campus near where I live. A few hours prior, a huge thunderstorm had brought down much of the area to ruins, and even now a faint coating of warm water on all the sidewalks and all the leaves of the shrubs, made me imagine it was a coat of wax laid down by some floor polisher that had just gone ahead and vigorously polished everything in town, like the minuteman floor polisher, boots and floor waxer always by his bedside, always ready to go out and wax the streets at a moments notice. Or something.

It was such a reflective moment for me, that I almost cried. And the thought of my warm weathered tears striking the concrete and evaporating off into steam actually did moisten my ducts a little bit. As I was wiping the tears from my eyes, a thought struck me, and I instantly pulled out my camera phone and snapped a picture of myself wiping the tears from my eyes with the other hand, to capture the moment for posterity.

I showed my picture to a couple of strangers on the street, and they were pretty knocked out about it, as you can see. Actually this shot of me showing the picture I took of myself being all sensitive and shit was staged. Sorry about that. I actually had to exchange my camera with another guy and have him snap this picture with my camera, while me and the girls posed ourselves and went over his contact list. We were laughing because we didn't recognize anyone on his list. It was pretty funny.

I actually love my new camera phone. I remember, back when I didn't have a camera phone, going out to bars with my friends, and not having a camera phone to take their pictures with. Most of my conversations with my friends often went like this:

"Hey, Bill! This is fun, hanging out in a bar, with all of our friends! You should take a picture of us with a camera phone, for posterity, and then you'll always remember this night, so that, when you want to remember this night, in this bar, for posterity's sake, you can look at the pictures you took of us, this night, and remember..."

"Yeah? Well, you know I would! That would be fucking awesome! Except there is a problem with that line of thinking, Carla (Carla's one of my friends)! I don't even own a camera phone!"

"That sucks!"

"I know!"

"I mean, that really sucks."

"I know!"

So after slapping myself in the forehead a few more times, I went out and got one. And shit, if I haven't been taking pictures with it. I've been pretty busy.

Probably the most anxiety inducing moment of all of this, though, was actually taking my first picture. How would my camera phone measure up to the others? This question was answered over a few pints of Guiness at some Irish pub I went to a few weeks ago. I'm pretty much impartial to Guiness, for me it's kind of a special-time kind of beer. Only for special social occasions will I drink a Guiness, like when I go to Irish pubs. It's because I'm afraid. I'm afraid that if I don't order a Guiness, that people will laugh at me for not ordering a Guiness. I guess it's just like what they say.

"When in Rome..."

"...do what the Romans do..."

Actually, am I even correct in making this assumption? I've always wondered what would happen if I ordered something funny in a Irish pub, you know, I don't know, like a Coors or something. Wouldn't the waiter just totally flip out? I'm going to have to try that sometime...

"Hey, waiter! Yeah, I would like...a...COORS!"

I bet that would totally knock him off his guard. Point, set, and match. It'd be all over. But it's kinda of scary, too, because I might get kicked out.

Yikes. Think I'll play it safe.

Anyway, so we're sitting around this table, enjoying our Guiness' and listening to U2 on the old surroundsound, and everybody is having a good time, laughing and talking and taking pictures of one another. Flash bulbs from our table illuminate our table like a bright blue glowstick, obscuring the smoke and dank darkness otherwise enveloping us. I make my move.

*Flash*

"Hey, will you look at that!" Carla said, "Bill has a camera phone!"

"Yes!" I said.

"GIVE IT TO ME!" she screamed at me. She looked at me with such hatred, that I almost dropped my beer on the floor.

"Okay.."

"Wow! This camera is the bomb! Can I take a picture of you with your camera?"

"Uh, sure." I felt like I was about to piss my pants. She looked at me, a quizzical look, as if my phone had better be the bomb.

The flash went off, and she turned the on the image viewer on the camera phone. She studied it, frowning the entire time. And then, the corners of her mouth turned upward. Then a smirk. Then a full-throated giggle.

"Oh my God!" She exclaimed, "I love the resolution on this phone!"

"Isn't it great!" I yelled back at her.

"Yes, I love it!"

"Well, thanks!"

And so a disaster was narrowly averted.

2005-05-20T00:59:00.000-04:00

My Tepid Excuse for not Updating Regularly, Plus Revenge of the Sith

I know I tend to post new entries in spurts, but I am really sorry about the total lack of updates this week. My sleep schedule is all out of whack, and I think I'm going to need the weekend to get myself back on track. But this week it's all been:

6:00AM -Get up, go to work.
6:45 PM -Get home.
7:00 PM -Nap for a couple of hours.
9:00 PM -Get up groggy, make phone calls, internet, tv, music, whatever else to wind down.
11:00 PM -Read Bible chapters for the day (see previous post)
12:30 PM -Try to go to bed.
1:00 AM -Can't sleep. Get back up.
3:30 AM -Crash in a heap on my bed.
6:00 AM -Rinse. Repeat.

Pretty deep, huh? There's two types of Star Wars fans out there, those that wait in line for days to be the first to see next Star Wars movie when it hits the screens, and those that photoshop creepy shit onto child actor's faces and make it their desktop wallpaper.

I'm actually looking forward to seeing the last installment, but I'll probably wait it out a couple weeks until the buzz dies down a bit. I hate showing up twenty minutes before a movie starts and being forced to sit in the front row.

2005-05-12T22:04:00.000-04:00

The Utter Joy of Throwing Old Refrigerators Down Stairs

Have you ever wondered how our country, just a year shy of it's 230th birthday, managed to accumulate so many myths and legends to its name? Think about it for a moment with me. How many tall tales have we as a people just totally pulled out of our asses, just for the hell of it. We have the cowboy. Totally made up. A fabrication created by pulp writers who had never ventured west of the Mississippi. I want to get a little bit into a problem area in American history. Tim Cahill once wrote an article about trekking across Death Valley in a book titled "Peking Ducks are Pecking the Liver Out of My Body," and in it he covers the problems inherent for humans attempting such a feat in a "true story" he calls The Man in The Freon Suit.

It concerns the tale of a guy who lived in the 19th century, during the time of the Wild West. The Man in the Freon Suit constructed an insulated body suit out of fiberglass and freon tubing from old refrigerators (yes, they existed back then) in order to trek across Death Valley, a desert wasteland where temperatures routinely reach 180 degress fahrenheit, a steaming funk of hell so cruel to life that no man has ever crossed it and lived to tell the tale. Before the invention of the automobile, at least.

The Man in the Freon Suit is a hard thing to understand, and perhaps even disturbing to the typical recreational reader. The biggest problem with freon is that, like uranium, it's a highly unstable chemical. But the problems inherent in the chemical nature of freon become more exciting when you add electricity into the mix. When it's excited by an electical current, freon reacts with moisture and contracts, which provides the nice cooling sensation present in appliances like refrigerators and carburetors, at least while they're running. However, when old freon refrigerators are left unplugged, freon loses the main catalyst responsible for it's reaction with water molecules, and this prevents condensation. Deprived of a resource capable of condensation, freon molecules frantically expand outward and react with pure, raw Hydrogen ions, and this releases an unbelievable amount of heat and radiation. Nothing comparable to a hydrogen bomb, but dangerous enough to warrant a fair amount of government attention during the time. This is essentially why we don't use freon coolant refrigerators anymore.

Tim Cahill's account of the tale explains to us that the man in the freon suit encountered a major problem with administering the freon to his suit. The reasons for this vary, some say the motor running the apparatus just died halfway into his trek, others opine that it was a clog or a break in the tubing. Regardless, the end result was the same. Death.

But unfortunatetly, Cahill allowed himself to speculate wildly on the manner of his death. Since freon is better known as a coolant, he says that the man in the freon suit must have frozen to death in the middle of Death Valley. He takes his account solely on the wild myths and oral tradition passed on by those blokes in Montana. Cahill's account, of course, is a serious fabrication. What probably happened was that, without an electrical current, the heat from walking across Death Valley in an insulated, padded suit would've excited the freon molecules into creating an internal temperature inside of his suit 70 or 80 degress higher than the surface temperature on Death Valley, and this excessive heat promptly cooked his brain.

The moral is the same, however. Don't build a suit out of used refrigerator parts if you wish to take on Death Valley.

Which brings me to my own little story. I live in a house with a couple of roommates, and our landload only stops by once a month to pick up or rent and utility checks. One day, a plesantly warm day with highs in the 70's, I noticed that the thermostat upstairs read an improbable 98 degrees.

I was curious for the discrepancy, since I was pretty sure we didn't have the furnace running. But I knew our landlord wouldn't stop by for another couple of weeks, so I decided to investigate. After checking in the basement to make sure the furnace wasn't running, I grabbed a ladder, and crawled up through the crawlspace upstairs into the attic, where I noticed that there were about 30 or so old fashioned freon style refrigerators, sitting upright, and unplugged.

While interesting, I knew that I couldn't deal with an upstairs floor 20 degrees hotter than the outside, so I immediately started tossing the refrigerators through the crawlspace and down onto the upstair floor.

It didn't take to long for the commotion to awaken my roommate, given it was about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. My roommate shouted from downstairs:

"Hey, it's three o'clock in the morning. What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm trying to cool the house down," I said, and paused. "It's gotta be at least 20-30 degrees hotter up here in the attic than it is down there."

"What?" My roommate asked.

"It's the freon! Freon heats up when there's no electrical current..." I paused, out of breath. "For some reason, there's a shitload of refrigerators up here."

"Oh, cool." my roommate responded. "Can I help?"

And together we pushed most of the refrigerators out of the attic, and then we pushed them down the stairs, where they made bright clanging noises.

We left ten or so up in the attic, as a way to provide some amount of internal heating for the house during the winter (cuts down on the heating bill, as we have to pay heating utilities in addition to the rent).

The garbage men, strangely enough, took all of the refrigerators, though they won't take our cardboard boxes filled with more garbage for some reason. Apparently the first rule for garbage men in our area is: Bag it, or we won't take it. Unless they're a bunch of refrigerators, because then we can fix them and sell them at flea markets.

Or something like that.

2005-05-11T21:39:00.000-04:00

My Life and Hard Times With Anthony Burgess

I remember first meeting Anthony Burgess back in the 70's, a few short years after the peak of his fame and Stanley Kubrick's release of "A Clockwork Orange," a movie based upon Burgess's famous novel of the same name. At the time, his literary star was rapidly fading, but back in the sixties, his heyday, he was huge, for a number of reasons. For one thing, "A Clockwork Orange" was not only a mammoth bestseller, but it also introduced to the world an entirely new type of syntax. A mix of Russian words combined with a cockneyed English accent, it inspired a litany of goofy slogans and internet catchphrases for generations to come.

But despite the success of "A Clockwork Orange," the information age which Burgess lived his post-successful life was not quite as appreciative of his work. He was a quirky man, full of eccentricities, and he would unleash wildly inappropriate quips to those foolish enough to cross him. Things back in the 70's weren't like they are today. Back in the 70's, if you made a serious ass out of yourself, people remembered you. Anthony Burgess found this out the hard way.

Prior to our chance encounter, Burgess had spent a good deal of his time denouncing Kubrick's masterpiece to any American media reporter who cared enough to listen.

"Nyet to Kubrick. 'Nyet' means no." -he said to The Boston Herald

"I invented Nadsat. I am a genius. Who is HE to interpret my work."- to the New Yorker

"Did you just ask if I 'felt horrorshow?' What the fuck could you possibly be talking about?" -to The District Examiner

He was an odd looking man, even for a man barely into middle age. Untamed hair that curled into hooks around his brow. You could almost say ol' Burgess bore a cross of thorns on his head. And then he'd slap you in the face for being so uncouth. Out of spite. He was just a spiteful man. And at the same time a gloomy one. Try and do a Google image search for "Anthony Burgess," and I guarantee you that you will find no color photographs of the man. Just Try It. Sure, I know you're going to say you found one of two 'color' photographs of him. You probably feel pretty proud of yourself for it, too. But before you copy and paste the links to me, just listen for a second.

They were retouched from old black and white photographs of him. They will revert back to their b&w origins in due time. That was just the nature of the man. Trust me on this.

There is a lot of conjecture to why a man of Anthony Burgess' statue could only be photographed in black and white. Some attempt to portray Burgess as a sort of melancholy King Midas. Eyewitnesses present during his lifetime reported a wispy black smoke emerging from his fingertips when he visited, choking their lungs and turning their upholstery dark grey. Soot would drop out of his trouser legs, horrifically expanding like it was a lit charcoal snake in his pants. When approached his eyes would turn bright white, and irradiate anything that remained untouched by his pervasive gloom. Wouldn't that be fucking weird?

The real reason why an exclusive with Anthony Burgess required such stringent demands was primarily because he considered himself a man of letters, but also because he demanded that the pictures taken of him portray him in as un-lifelike a manner as possible. For posterity, I guess. Which was how I found him when I went to get my copy of "MF." signed at a local Barnes and Noble. He looked like an ancient. His eyes were glazed over by cataracts, so I guess I had no reason to fear being irradiated by the old man, but for some reason he smiled at me as I approached and his blind eyes twinkled with a faint glimmer of recognition.

"Ah, yes. I remember. Do I know you from somewhere? Do I owe you something?"

"No-no," I said. I was very nervous, and with arms shaking, I opened up my copy of "MF." for him to sign. "...Just a fan."

"Fantastic!" He exclaimed far too loudly as he scrawled enthusiastically over the table with his pen. "I like fans..."

Dejected, I closed my book, making to leave. "Thank you very much, Mr. Burgess."

"Call me Anthony!"

"Sure."

He pointed behind me to my girlfriend at the time, Rachel. She was standing behind me, her arms crossed and her foot impatiently tapping the floor. She looked like she really wanted to leave.

"Actually, you." Mr. Burgess said, "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight? What did you just say to me? Dinner at Eight?"

I looked over at Rachel. She frowned at me, so I told Anthony, "Sure, eight o' clock sounds great!"

He quickly gave us directions to his place and sent us on our way. We arrived at around quarter of eight, and he lived in a bad part of town. The cul de sac next to the building enclosed a 30 foot high grey marble bust of him wearing a mortarboard cap. Surrounding the base of the bust were carved depictions of cherubs blaring trumpets, cloud formations, and depictions of various forms of human sacrifice. A marble orange gagged the bust's mouth, unpeeled, perhaps symbolizing the bitterness Anthony Burgess felt about his life's work. While he wasn't the most humble man in the world, I guess, it was a fitting symbol for someone who believed that, in the end, we were all robots.

As we cautiously approached the front door, Anthony threw open the second story windows of his loft to greet us, and black smoke quickly poured out of the house. The stench that wafted out of the house was completely rank. It smelt like somebody threw some putrid decaying thing into the oven and just left it there for the day.

"You're not cooking dead cats up in there, are you....Mr. Burgess?"

"No. Not at all , good chap! It's my birthday!" he exclaimed as he waved his arms around. "I'm baking a cake!"

"Wow," I said, "If I'd known, I wouldn't baked you one myself..."

He attempted to speak, but indulged in a hacking fit so harsh that he dry heaved over us towards the street. "That's okay. Please, come inside, please."

The front door was unlocked, so we entered. The house was full of smoke, and it only became more intolrerable when Mr. Burgess ran down the stairs to greet us with a burnt cake in his arms. He gestured us towards his dining room, and quickly dropped the cake on the dining room table. I observed that Mr. Burgess didn't appear to be wearing pot holders.

"Please! Be Seated!" he yelled at us, throwing his head to and fro as if he was attempting to located us without the use of his eyes.

As we walked over to join him, he threw his arms up and shook his head. "Oh Christ! I forgot! I don't have any birthday candles!!!!"

He looked towards the area where he though we were standing. He wasn't too far off the mark. "Old chap, would you go ahead and do me a huge favor." he smiled. "Would you go to that get some candles for me at that corner gift shop for me? It's just a block away, and I'm pretty sure they have birthday candles."

He chuckled to himself. "I mean, they must have birthday candles!"

After arguing a bit with Rachel, I persuaded her to stay with Anthony Burgess while I went out to get the candles. After all, he was a literary genius. I figured he, if no one else, could keep her company while I was out.

When I returned, the loft was still pretty smokey to a certain extent, but a bit more tolerable. Rachel had on my old Washington Senators cap, which she must've fished out of my bag while I was gone.

Anthony Burgess was standing over the cake, cutting and serving it onto small paper plates. He cocked his head as he heard me approaching.

"To what do I owe your appearance here?" he asked, "Do I know you? Do I owe you something?"

"I've got your birthday candles right here." I said.

"Oh, just lovely!" he said, "I didn't know it was someone's birthday! Perhaps we should have some cake!"

I walked over beside him. "Yeah. Why don't you have a seat, sir? I can serve the cake for you."

"MMMmmmm..." Rachel said, "Ugggghhhh..." Poor thing. Perhaps I was wrong. Maybe Anthony Burgess' strong suit wasn't in making idle conversation.

"Yes, perhaps you can serve cake..." Mr. Burgess mused, "or perhaps you can serve..." and then his brain went else where...

"So many civilizations eat their slain enemies... what do you think...?" he mused, "How much better to devour a person physically....than to devour his spirit? Which is...of course, how silly of me, THE PURPOSE OF THE INSTITUTION!..."

Suddenly, he jumped up from his seat and removed Rachel's Washington Senators baseball cap. The top half of Rachel's skull had been completely sawed off, presumably by Anthony Burgess, and in place of her scalp lay the exposed entrails of her brains.

"Ses cerveaux pour ici ou pour aller?" he asked me.

I stood there transfixed, unable to move. Weakness overtook my body. Burgess was patient with me, taking his time to cut out a portion of Rachel's brain with a fork and a knife and present it to me.

"You must...eat?"

I didn't take too much time to make a decision about that. I ran out of there with the tail between my legs faster than a speeding photon. I never saw Anthony Burgess again, but before his untimely death at the age of 76, he was the recipient of many literary awards, such as the Hugo and the Peabody. He never did win back his fan base, who never fully recovered from the film treatment of his landmark "A Clockwork Orange," but I think the bigger obstacle might have had something to do with the fact he never completely cleared himself of the rumors his fans had circulated that he enjoyed eating human flesh. Still, I feel that just knowing Mr. Burgess, however briefly, has enriched and qualified my own life. Though I regret the loss of my dearly departed Rachel, and while I did think about reporting it to the police for a number of years, who am I to wrassle with a man of such abundant literary talents?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

2005-05-10T23:47:00.000-04:00

Uh, Actually...I am the Man Who Will Fight For Your Honor...

I've been accumulating a few links to throw out to you to enjoy.

I'm fascinated by the Republican blogger turncoat "GW is not a God, freepers !" thing that's kinda popped up in certain blogs since the last election. The most obvious example is Andrew Sullivan, of course, who actually ended up endorsing John Kerry in the last election. But I think the best of the bunch is John Cole, of Balloon Juice fame, a Republican who seems to be virtually tearing his hair ou t with every post he writes.

I'd also like to endorse Ariana Huffington's superblog, mostly because Slate (which has been on roll this week with political silliness) thinks it sucks. Actually, that might be a bit premature even for Slate. But It seems it already thinks da Huffpost is an epitaph waiting to happen as it approaches it's two day anniversary. Given the lag, I'm not sure what to think about it yet, though I enjoyed Larry David's appraisal of John Bolton.

I've been listening to internet radio a lot lately. It's a great internet radio station that where listeners can upload and add to the master playlist, which plays 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The gem of the station is frequency of sheer novelty songs that are played during the course of the day, and songs that are edited, speeded up, or otherwise fucked up.

A key example of this is a song I heard by Peter Cetera called "The Glory of Love." Played sanely in it's entirely, it's your typical 80's movie soundtrack mediocore love song. "The Glory of Love" is actually from "The Karate Kid", and you generally hear it every time Ralph Macchio and his gal look at each other. The key lyric that announces the bridge to us is "Like a knight in shining armour, from a long time ago..."

It's is called "The Glory of Love -Extended Remix" -and this version reprises the bridge lyric for about two whole minutes. It sounds like a broken record. Which it is...

Here are the lyrics to "The Glory of Love" with appropriate links:

Tonight it's very clear
As we're both lying here
There's so many things I want to say
I will always love you
I would never leave you alone

Sometimes I just forget
Say things I might regret
It breaks my heart to see you crying
I don't wanna lose you
I could never make it alone

I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero you're dreaming of
We'll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love

You'll keep me standing tall
You'll help me through it all
I'm always strong when you're beside me
I have always needed you
I could never make it alone

I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero you've been dreaming of
We'll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love

Just like a knight in shining armor
From a long time ago
Just in time I will save the day
Take you to my castle far away

I am a man who will fight for your honor
I'll be the hero you're dreaming of
We're gonna live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love

We'll live forever
Knowing together that we
Did it all for the glory of love

We did it all for love

Indeed.

2005-05-03T19:31:00.000-04:00

Bruce Springsteen on Slate

I read this piece in Slate this morning, and then again when I got home from work today, and I still can't get my head around what the fucking point of this article is. It seems to be from the point of view of someone who knows Bruce Springsteen, and yet at the same time never aludes to meeting the man personally. In fact, it's written from the point of view of a fan-boy who truely "knows" Bruce.

Thirty years later, and largely thanks to Landau, Springsteen is no longer a musician. He's a belief system. And, like any belief system worth its salt, he brooks no in-between. You're either in or you're out. This has solidified Bruce's standing with his base, for whom he remains a god of total rock authenticity. But it's killed him with everyone else. To a legion of devout nonbelievers—they're not saying Bruuuce, they're booing...

What the fuck is this horseshit? I think I represent most people when I say that if a Bruce Springsteen song comes on the radio that I like, I'll listen to it, or if I don't, I'll just go ahead and change the station.

I won't argue any of the finer points of this article. It's just stupid. You could write this exact same article about this about any media personality, or any advertiser, who tries to sell you stuff.

"Madonna is a fraud, but we love her anyway. Starting out as a innocent but punky Catholic girl from Detroit (she was in the cast of Godspell, for crying out loud!), Madonna allowed the media and her managers to shape her into something very different!"

Yeah.

2005-04-28T21:53:00.000-04:00

Getting Old Sucks

Lately I've been subjected to any number of chronic physical discomforts, all which have manifested themselves in the last six months or so. It's kind spooky, and I've never been close to even being a closet hypochondriac, but is there some age where you're body just falls to shit? Is it your somewhere in your late twenties?

Symptoms include, but are not limited to:

Aching bones, particularly in my legs, which have been feeling slightly, dare I say -arthritic. A dull constant pain and a certain sluggishness. This probably concerns me the most, since within the last five years I've fractured bones in my left leg 3 times. Ankle, fibula, and the big toe. I still actutely fracturing the big toe. Even when I broke my fibula, I was able to walk myself to my car and take myself to the emergency room. The pain was so slight that I even sat in my bed for a bit and wondered if maybe I just twisted my leg something good. Not so with the big toe. I could barely handle keeping my balance while stand upright. Two of my friends had to escourt me to my car while I hopped along with them with my right foot.

Extremely dry skin. This has actually alleivated itself a couple of weeks ago, but for awhile my skin was so dry I made a habit the layers off while sitting around bored at work.

Those are the two big things. The dry skin thing is mostly cosmetic -walking around like a undead corpse with dry flesh peeling off of your face isn't the most appealing thing to observe. But the stiff joints worries me a bit more. I generally think to keep myself in good physical shape, with some lapses every once in a while. But maybe I'm just getting older.

A huge lump has been growing out of my prostrate lately. It kinda freaks me out a little. It's feels sorta cancerous, but it's hard to tell. I mean, I feel sick and stuff, but how do you real self-diagnose yourself with cancer? I think I'm going to obsess myself with this the next few weeks, y'know, really work myself up, and then go visit the emergancy room.

Of course, it's possible I'm entirely full of shit. I'll follow up the next time I visit my doc.

2005-04-27T23:22:00.000-04:00

My Belated Thoughts on Pope Benedict XVI

Oh my god, I can't believe it's been over a month! Holy shit, they elected a fucking Nazi as the Pope! Holy fuck, where have I been?

All Hail Pope Ratso Rizzo XVI. Oh well, at least he seems to be having a good time.

2005-03-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

Stuff...

Yeah, a lot of stuff. Right now I can't count the number of times I've seen Randall Terry (Arrested over 40 times! And Counting! Woo-hoo!) on the broadcasts.

But not even he's as insane as apparently most members of Congress.

I'm seriously blown away after this weekend. Unfortunately, you suckered me in, America. I'm now totally into and enthralled by the Schiavo case -not really because I care about the case itself, but because I cannot get over how much this country wants to get involved in what is ultimately a personal dispute that should have been resolved legally already.

That is what is ultimately unprecidented. And then there are the sheer amount of gratutitious lies involved -that she "could have recovered" despite the slight problem of having a liquified cerebral cortex. That they're "starving her to death," which is the big catch-phrase, has led certain freepers to believe that she is somehow capable of feeding herself, is well on her way to recovery, and that the doctors are plotting to withhold food and water from her because of the deep malice self-evident in their black fucking hearts. That somehow Michael Schiavo, evil genius and Grand-Fuhrer teacher of evolution in our public schools, is somehow pulling the wool over the eyes of the entire Florida Judicial System. All said with a straight face. And all of this could be (and has been) ripped to fucking shreds in a matter of seconds by someone who has spent five minutes of his or her time going over the facts of the case.

But that doesn't even matter. For as long as I can remember, decisions involving life-support, basically whether or not to pull the plug, have always been serious personal decisions made by family or those close enough to the patient who have a serious interest in the wellfare of the patient. It's unfortunate that Terri's family couldn't reach a consensus, but that's why we have the courts. And the courts have unanimously decided in favor of one of the parties. Unless you really believe that the courts want to murder her just for the sheer fun of killing (and there's some of that going around, which I think is why this story is so mindbogglingly fascinating, in a crazy sort of way), all of this is simply a political strategem to subvert a fairly simply process that has in my mind worked fairly well without controversy for the sane.

But I guess we've given up on sanity for the time being, for whatever reason.

Edit: Pat Buchannan invokes Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies, on MSNBC no less. Folks -what we've been facing is a fucking Holocaust of epic proportions. Holy shit -I gotta quit watching cable news.

2005-03-08T19:09:00.000-05:00

See ya, Dan Rather

Eugene Robinson, my absolute new Toppermost of the Poppermost out of the Washington Post columnists this year, says exactly what I've always liked about Dan Rather, but was always unable to articulate.

Really, it's an excellent column that says absolutely everything that needs to be said about the importance and personality of Dan Rather, and if Mr. Robinson doesn't get an award for this column, there is no justice out in pundit-land.

2005-03-04T17:29:00.000-05:00

Paranoid, Twisted, Nuts, and Unable to Sleep

Well, I think Hunter's been dead for long enough, so time to take him on the top of the page.

Sorry about the lack of updates, but my life is a big fucking circus right now, and all of the words described in the title above temporarily apply, more or less.

I can't go into detail. One, I hate live journals. Two, the slim chance that it could get back to someone. So that's not going to happen.

As much as I would like to go on, it's a Friday and there's a happy hour with my name written all over it. Catch ya on the flip side...

2005-02-21T14:31:00.000-05:00

We'll Miss You, Hunter

I've spent the better part of the day going over some of the commentary and obits for Hunter S. Thompson, all the while trying to work out in my head what I could possibly contribute or say about his passing. But when I hit one of the comments posted on the blogs:

"Shit...they finally got him."

And I seriously broke up after reading that. One of the great interview questions put to Hunter was when someone asked that, for someone always decrying that the American Dream was dead, why did he seem to be such a living embodiment of it?

And while HST didn't like to admit it, he in some part found a portion of what the American Dream was about, and partook in it for as long as he could.

Even though I read Hunter S. Thompson in High School like a lot of disaffected teens, and continued reading him again and again throughout the rest of my life, he is, like a lot of my influences, hard to pigeonhole. So I took a walk. I had the day off, and I took a quick walk down 23rd past the State Department to the Lincoln Memorial, just to reflect, see if there were others from the area seeking to put it together, and maybe to attempt to put something together that I wasn't really sure I could.

I figured they'd be easy enough to point out if there were any to be found. After all, HST has to be the patron saint of misfits. But it was just the tourist crowd. I spent most of the time trying to stay out of the way of cameras as I tried to read Lincoln's 2nd Inaugural Address. They I looked at a few of the wreaths lain at Lincoln's feet, and puttered back down the stairs.

Nothing yet.

I strolled onto one of the paths towards the WWII, and it was quite peaceful. Even though you know that you are being observed by at least 5 or 10 Nation Park Service Rangers and/or Secret Service as you take your quiet, peaceful stroll, it's nothing to get up in arms about if you don't tend to think about those things. I usually don't -in fact, the only distractions from my internal conversation on all things Hunter were a couple of incidents where a handful of tourists were completely knocked out about the squirrels, of all things.

The first incident I passed by concerned a squirrel on his hindlegs, dancing around in a small circle. There was a crowd of tourists, and a guy at the POW kiosk was yelling at them excitedly -"No I don't have any more freaking nuts!" -A bunch of kids were apeing the squirrel excitedly, as if they had never seen anything like it before in their short, sad lives.

Okay -second incident was on the opposite end of the reflecting pool near the new WWII Memorial. The WWII Memorial hasn't really found a place in my heart for me just yet, but it's as good of an end point as any before hitting the Washington Memorial, which is just not walkable at this point. Not since they decided to stick in a subterannean shopping mall underneath it and do away with walking across the park. Actually, a lot of the National Mall is just dreadful for pedestrians right now -sidewalks and roads closed everywhere, jersey barricades and lots and lots of orange construction shit that does it's best to obscure the monuments they contain and terrify passersby at the same time -and detours upon detours that can make a simple half mile jaunt into a 6 mile road of confusion and fear. 'What happens if they find you on one of those forrbidden sidewalks?' you ask yourself, privately 'will they just shoot you onsite?'

But I meant it when I said that the reflecting pool portion of the mall does it's darnedest to allow you to forget that stuff, which is one of the reasons why I walk it so much. Anyway, enough digressions -the second squirrel incident occurred as I said, near the WWII Memorial, again tourists and their kids. The kids were running towards this squirrel, and I again blinked a few times. I know that other portions of this country have squirrels. The mother was laughing, "Hey, man -that's Alphonse! Don't touch him, Trudi -he probably has an acute case of the sickness!"

Then the father chimed, "Ha! Yeah! You leave that Alphonse alone! He's sick! And he's not doing anything to anyone!"

Now I'm not going to say I had this wild epiphany about HST while watching these children attack squirrels on a vacation in Washington DC. I'm sure Hunter could've done something with that sort of material -I mean he did do a "political allegory" susposedly based upon Pat Buchanan in which HST trapped foxes in cages and shoveled dung and peacock feathers into the bars. But unfortunately his political allegories left me confused at times.

Even so, there are a lot of reasons to appreciate and mourn Hunter S. Thompson's death. Too many. He seems to have affected everyone in a completely different way. Evidence -I haven't seen any two tributes to him attempt to paint him or his influence in a similar light. Politcos love him for his "On the Campaign Trail '72." Other people like him because he got the crap kicked out of him by the Hell's Angels...in pursuit of the story (something every journalist I'm sure has a hankering for). Some people are in love with him simply because of the Fear and Loathing movie, which I think is a bit unfortunate. After all, he was obviously a bit more than just a cartoon freak. But whatever.

Regardless, it seems to me that Hunter had a gift to allow the reader to make as big or as little of a deal as they needed to make out of him. To me, he outlined and documented the circumstances of how this country became less fun and more cynical to the generations born after him. He wrestled his entire life to come up with a reason for why it happened, but even if that's an unanswerable question, or perhaps too personal a one to answer himself, he still tried him damnedest.

That, and the fact that he could write like a sonofabitch, should make him a literary hero for generations to come (provided we're not at the End of Days already).

2005-02-17T22:34:00.000-05:00

Numa Numa Dance Has Already Been Played Out, You Sick Fucks!

I've gotten a pretty big increase in traffic here lately. Not because I'm suddenly being noticed or anything by anyone in particular, but just because I've gotten Google searched to death, due to the fact that I linked to that fat kid who lip syncs to his webcam. It's known on the web as the "Numa Numa Dance," and it's big enough that doing a Google search myself revealed not only a ton of threads about it in various forums but also a bunch of people imitating the thing in front of their webcams and posting it on the internet.

Well, whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I also missed doing a Valentine's Day thing here that I wanted to do, but alas, could not. In lieu of this, and since we're talking about Newgrounds for the most part anyway, I'll give you a link to this, which I think is pretty cute. The music works perfectly with the flash animation.

Posting will be pretty sporadic -there's just too much going on in the world, and in my life. I'm getting pretty overloaded, but I'll try to put some original stuff up as soon as I can.

2005-02-09T22:18:00.000-05:00

Vacation Time!!

Just so you know, I'm taking a nice long break from blogging until next week...probably. I mean, if something worth relating comes up, I'll put it up beforehand, but I've got a feeling this is just going to be one of those weeks, and I hate the idea of people coming back here expecting updates and not getting any, so...

Check out my links, or read my archives if you're desparate for something to do. See ya next week.

2005-02-07T17:45:00.000-05:00

Ooh..Someone's Going to Get It!

Slate stirs up the pot with this lame-o story, and puts it on the Front Page juxtaposed with smiling (or disorientated -take your pick) Tom Brady.

Wow! Let the shit storm begin!

2005-02-06T23:26:00.000-05:00

Honestly Couldn't Get into the SuperBowl This Year

One way not to get too involved with a Superbowl is to not care too much about either of the teams playing. I've found that this year the contrary position thingy also proves true -liking both teams equally also lends one to not care too much about the outcome of the game.

Because I couldn't root for one team over the other, I'm just content with the outcome of the game, and hope that there isn't a rematch next time around.

2005-02-02T19:22:00.000-05:00

2005 State of the Union -Who Set the Roof on Fire?

Oh man.

Can't say I'm really looking forward to even watching this, let alone commenting on it in real time, but it's something to do, I guess.

See you in a bit.

Update (8:03 PM): Atrios has some little crumbs on the hot button topic of the SOTU -Social Security. I'm still up in the air about Social Security reform, but I figure the Social Security system works well enough not to warrant any major tinkering. I don't buy into the crisis thing, although I do believe in solvency, I don't like the the idea of a major overhaul and massive spending of my tax dollars just to cut SS benefits.

Update (8:30 PM): While we're waiting for this thing to come on, I might as well point out I'm listening to Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot." I'm not quite sure if I like this album or not. Not really sure if I like Wilco's other stuff to begin with, they're kind of a "meh" band with me. But a few of the songs are pretty striking. A lot of people think that this album is a 9-11 tribute, since it came out in 2002. Although it was recorded before the 9-11 attacks, some of the stuff about the album -the cover art features two identical towers (not those Twin Towers, but they're close enough to evoke the comparison), one of the songs is called "Ashes of American Flags," and the song "Jesus, Etc." contains the lyrics "Tall buildings shake, voices escape...singing sad, sad songs." Even the title is military lingo for...something, I guess. Whatever Jeff Tweedy was getting on about when he wrote those songs, after listening to the album a few times, I think he caught onto something big about what this decade in America was going to be about.

Update (8:55 PM): I need a haircut. I get really bugged out when my hair gets too long. You remember the Paul McCartney back up band "Wings." Yeah, they named them after me...when my hair gets too long. I once told a girl I was seeing (and I think this was in college, late 90's) that I wanted to grow my hair out like real, real long. And she was all like "NO! Don't do that!" When I was all like "Why? Pourquoi?" She was like, "You'd look like Dylan Klebold if you did that." Yeah. Remember Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine High School shooters? Yeah, so I've kept my hair short from that point on, barring times when I thought that the Billy Ray Cyrus look was actually kinda cool and kept my sides short but let the back grow long. Embarrassing, yes, but I'm from a Red State. We think that way sometimes. And it was kinda like a protest in a way -"I want to have long hair but I don't want everyone to pick up on the Dylan Klebold thing." (Note: No, I don't look a thing like Dylan Klebold, or Billy Ray. Sorry about that. Anyway, the SOTU is coming up soon. Better get it together.)

Update (9:53 PM): Huh? Wha happen? I think I caught a bit of the "Axis o' Evil" Part Deux. Wait a minute. Is France a part of this? Am I a dumbass for speaking en francais? Sorry, I missed most of the SOTU, and I'm just catching up. Was it cool? Nine o'clock is a bad time for a SOTU, IMHO, and I've been slammed by a bunch of phone calls leading up to the State of the Union taking full advantage of the nighttime free minutes general for most cell phone plans, which -I'm sorry, but I had not the heart to put them on hold to listen to the President. Forgive me, gentle blog readers.

Update (9:58 PM): That's fantastic. Do we have any goals in Iraq at this point? Define stability.

Update (10:03 PM): Dreams. Confidence. Freedom. Providence. Dreams. Genius. That's all, folks.

2005-02-01T22:07:00.000-05:00

This is Fantastic!

Check this out. Gleened from the Annals of Improbable Research, one of the great science-based humor sites on the web.

2005-02-01T21:13:00.000-05:00

Amy Goodman on "Hardball" and the Last Hurrah for a Live Blogger

As a self-loathing liberal, I hate to conceed points to the far-left hippies out there who gain enough prominence in the media to get onto a show like "Hardball." But I will have to admit that Amy Goodman, who is the host of "Democracy Now!" on Pacifica radio, is smart and clearly ideological without being absolutely batshit fucking insane.

That's a breath of fresh air. I think.

I was amazed by how she turned the tables on Chris Matthews (at least in my mind) with the "who's the greatest personality in the Democratic Party today" question. The funny thing about political parties, at least in theory, is that they were initially susposed to group people together into a "party" based on a shared positions and political interests, rather than a charismatic cult of personality. Goodman correctly attempted to point this out Chris Matthews, and then was quickly put out to pasture the Matthews way by his repeating the notion that "she wasn't answering the question."

While I give Matthews credit for being a tad bit fairer than say, Bill O'Reilly, I still gotta say. Chris Matthews is a blowhard. His show is done in a format sometimes called a "debate show," and while the debate format can sometimes be rigid, it usually makes allowances that for when someone brings up a valid or more interesting point than the question being asked actually required, that point is allowed to be discussed and debated. While decorum is encouraged, debate was never intended to be an authoritarian, scripted enterprise. Amy Goodman made an interesting point about how political parties are susposed to be more about positions held by many than about personalities and celebrity. Matthews of course called her an insane liberal harlot who was "not answering the question!"

Democrats are wafflers who always evade issues! LOL!

Finally, with the State of the Union tomorrow night, I have to announce that tomorrow will be my last live blog. I honestly can't imagine how interesting a live blog of Bush's first SOTU of his second term would be to anyone, really, but I'll give it a shot.

It might not be my best, since I doubt my heart will be into it. But hopefully, and with a little bit of imagination, I hope it'll be my craziest.

2005-01-31T22:01:00.000-05:00

To Recap

Elections in Iraq seem to have worked out pretty well.

The prospects for T.O. playing in the Super Bowl are still up in the air.

The Washington Wizards continue to be surprisingly good this year. Gilbert Arenas is still very impressive. Larry Hughes is still out.

Michael Jackson still has fans that will support him to the end, and they're probably not even being ironic about it. I think.

-Yeah, I have absolutely nothing to say tonight. I felt compelled to post, though, if only to knock my previous post off the top of the page. Due to the "warm" weather we've been having the last couple of days, it no longer seemed appropriate.

2005-01-27T21:15:00.000-05:00

Today is the Day I Write Old Humorous Cliches About the Cold Weather in DC and Punctuate Them with Exclamation Points

Hello! Wow! Can you believe the weather we've been having! It was so cold I got out my ice pick and mallet just in case I needed to build an igloo for shelter!!

Wow! It was so cold today! Hitchhikers were holding up pictures of thumbs! Can you believe it! I just can't!

I was shivering so much today! How much! I was so cold, I almost got married! To a cold woman! Now, now! Not just any cold woman! We're talking about a woman so cold that while making love to her you can see her breath vaporize! Now that's pretty cold!

Today, in fact! My apartment is cold! I actually pulled everything out of my freezer! Wait a beat, please! It'll be so totally worth it! Yeah, so I took out everything out of my freezer, because, get this! I wanted to huddle in my freezer to keep warm! Oh my God! What a day!

Birds are crazy! Because it was so cold, the snowflakes were frozen in place! I saw the birds hopping from one snowflake to the other! It was so weird! Then they got frozen in place, and so did I, as I was walking in the cold! Then we just stood frozen in place and starred at each other!

It was so cold in Washington, DC, that even the politicians had their hands in their own pockets! Talk about comedic irony, people! Call me crazy, or just freezing my ass off, but I just could not believe it! What a day!

2005-01-26T17:19:00.000-05:00

The Things They Teach Kids These Days!!

I get a monthly subscription to Harpers, and I'd love for them to put some more of their stuff online so I could link to it occasionally. Since they don't, I'm forced to type some of these excerpts out manually, but it's so worth it. These are excerpts taken from teaching materials provided and funded by your Federal Tax dollars for high school abstinence programs. Bush has already earmarked $167 million this year for abstinence programs this year alone, and the excerpts below were included in a report to Rep. Henry Waxman as examples of "False, misleading, or distorted information." They were taken from eleven of the thirteen most commonly used programs (excerpts in italics)

-

Females have the uncanny ability to remember the most insignificant details about past experiences. This terrifies the average male. The loaded question "Do you remember when..." sends many an unsuspecting guy into a cold sweat. Men tend to be more tuned in to what is happening today and what needs to be done for a secure future.

-

Circle the items(s) that can be totally eliminated through the use of a condom: infertility, isolation, jealousy, poverty, heartbreak, pregnancy, AIDS, substance abuse, genital herpes, unstable long-term commitments, meaningless wedding, distrust of others, sexual violence, cervical cancer, personal disappointment, feelings of being used, pelvic inflammatory disease, loss of reputation, suicide.

Now cross out the item(s) that can be eliminated by being abstinent until marriage.

-

Deep inside every man is a knight in shining armor, ready to rescue a maiden and slay a dragon. When a man feels trusted, he is free to be the strong, protecting man he longs to be.

Imagine a knight traveling through the countryside. He hears a princess in distress and rushes gallantly to slay the dragon. The princess calls out, "I think this noose will work better!" and throws him a rope. As she tells him how to use the noose, the knight obliges her and kills the dragon. Everyone is happy, except for the knight, who doesn't feel like a hero. He is depressed and unsure of himself. He would have preferred to use his own sword.

The knight goes on another trip. The princess reminds him to take the noose. The knight hears another maiden in distress. He remembers how he used to feel before he met the princess; with a surge of confidence, he slays the dragon with his sword. All the townspeople rejoice, and the knight is a hero. He never returned to the princess. Instead, he lived happily ever after in the village, and eventually married the maiden, but only after making sure she knew nothing about nooses. (LOL)

Moral of the story: Occasional assistance may be all right, but too much will lessen a man's confidence or even turn him away from his princess.

-

Sexual relationships often lower the self-respect of both partners -one feeling used, the other feeling like the user. Emotional pain can cause a downward spiral, leading to intense feelings of worthlessness.

Investment in another results in pain when break-up occurs; he/she feels deeper pain because he/she already see events in an emotional way. This depression may lead to attempted, or successful, suicide.

-

These are all true, presumably (I mean, I didn't read the full report, but I figure if Harper's published them, they're probably true). After reading those, I can't say I'd have been too much more knocked out to find out they were into writing stuff like "Prior to intercourse, most women will stick razor blades into their vaginas and claim that they're 'menstruating', because women are vicious and duplicitous swine..." It almost read like a College Republicans manual as is.

I love Harpers.

Edit: Just so you don't think I'm making all this shit up, here's some fun links. A Washington Post Article. Some Conservative Dingbat's attempt to tie Rep. Waxman in with the Abortion Industry (which I would guess would have an "Abortion Lobby" fit to rival the NRA, or something). And here's my Google search to provide you with all of the abstinence education reporting over the past few months. Waxman's report was actually issued a few months ago, which doesn't make this news or anything, but still, it's funny.

2005-01-25T21:51:00.000-05:00

Scrapple From the Apple

You know, there are not that many things out there that can call themselves the "funniest" since the debut of sliced bread. But I think that Scrappleface could just possibly last at least eight rounds or so as a contender for the title.

One of the great parodies Scrappleface provides is in its web design, which kinda imitates the Drudge Report style of headlines, and combines this with ads demanding your Visa account whenever your eyes veer a couple of inches from the center of the screen. I would've laughed my ass off right then and there if at the bottom of one of his Onion-styled "news stories" he said "developing...BUY "BUSH IS SO MUTHERFUCKING AWESOME -BY I. CRAPPED PANTS FROM AMAZON.COM FOLLOW THIS LINK>>>>!!!!11!!"

But of course, Scott Ott is not that kinda guy.

No, his humor is far subtler, which makes his ironies far more unique and delicious. I love the fact that he calls Hillary Clinton's position on abortion "pro-chife" -thank God I wasn't drinking milk when I read that one, cause I would've totally snorted milk right out of my nose, which would've left a big mess on my computer. And then I would've had to put my hand to my mouth and say "Oops," cause it would've been like an oops kinda moment for me, like that Norman Rockwell painting where that kid pulling his kid brother in that wagon lets go of the handle and watches in suspense as the runaway wagon speeds down the hill into the middle of downtown traffic in San Francisco.

Oops!

Sorry for the pointless vitrol. I'm not a bitter person, I just got a kick out of the fact that it won Funniest Blog or something in 2004 from some conservative coalition somewhere. That's all (no I won't provide a link).

2005-01-23T23:15:00.000-05:00

Super Bowl

Hey, I'm just hoping for a good and exciting game. The Patriots seem to be on some sort of ass-kicking session served with spoonfuls of irony right now (they hold the top offense Colts to 3 points, then turn around and rout the top defense in the NFL by scoring 41 points??), but right now I'm just hoping against hope that the Eagles will put up a good fight against them in the Super Bowl.

...

Well, one can hope, right?

2005-01-23T16:01:00.000-05:00

I'm Gonzo for Hilary Duff and JoJo!

I was on the blue line train to Largo Town Center the other night, going over the war plans, on my way to the DC Armory to see what all of this nonsense was about. A political mime with anti-Bush pins on his suspenders had been dancing around one of the poles in my car in a decidedly erotic manner, desperately trying to milk the confusion and utter panic in the faces of its "audience" for whatever it could milk. After a bit of this, he turned and obnoxiously patted a sad and disheveled man singing "Bill Bailey" under his breath on the head, and then starred quietly at him, only inches away from his face, in a manner that I can only claim as being "obsessive."

I was heading to the DC Armory for the first of the inaugural events in honor of the re-elected President of these United States, George W. Bush. Nominally "America's Future Rocks Today: A Call to Service." I had no idea what that could possible mean, but Bush and his family would be there, as well as musicians as diverse as Hillary Duff, to JoJo, to 3 Doors Down. I was intrigued.

When I got off the train and exited the station in Washington DC, a crack whore attempted to shove a pipe into my mouth.

"Here..." she offered, as she tried to eat my elbow. "Try this. You'll like it."

I quickly pushed her aside and tried to get my bearings in this decadent portion of the city. Tenement buildings were in a state of utter deterioration, rapidly being consumed by flames that stretched in a vibrant orange halo as far as the eye could see and lit up the night sky. Scalpers sold tickets on the street corners, pausing only to occasionally brush off the hot ash from the burning buildings that drifted lazily through the air and almost seemed attracted to their bright Fubu jackets.

I finally found the Armory, a hollow shell of a building, dull and at the same time, very interesting. I presented my ticket a biker dude with Hell's Angels insignia, and thought -wow, even the Angels are Republicans now. I'm very, very scared.

"Aren't you a little old to have been one of the volunteers?" he asked me as he raised an eyebrow.

"Yes, you're right, but my daughter was a volunteer..." I said as I shuffled my feet over the gravel of the walkway into the Armory. "She couldn't come because she's dying of tuberculosis. But she really wanted to hear how cool the concert was from someone she trusted, so she asked me to go in her place."

"Arrrrghh..." he growled, like a pirate. "Well, okay. Just don't let it happen again."

The sweet air inside the Armory was too sickening to be tolerated. It smelt of decay and moral failure. I squeezed my nostrils together with one hand as I fumbled around in my pockets for a cigarette, and then scanned the walls for the closest bar.

There were tons of teenagers in the main part of the concert hall, mostly accompanied by their parents. One of the kids came up to me.

"Hey, I don't think you're allowed to smoke here!" she said.

"Yeah, is that what you think? ...Well you just shut up, then." I scowled at her, and took another drag. "That's right, you just shut up right now and go listen to your stupid Hillary Duff!" I was almost spit the last two words out, they made me want to wretch.

Of course, she ran off sobbing. I decided to finish her off.

"You know what? You're not cool! You're a dork! Dork!" I had to shout, because she was probably about halfway across the Armory by now, but my shouting caused a bit of a commotion, and a couple of Secret Service Agents came over to confront me.

"Hey man," they said, both looking down at the ground, "you know, I know this sucks and all, but we're going to have ask to extinguish your cigarette. No smoking."

"Okay." I said, as I dropped my cigarette on the floor and stomped it out.

One of the SS agents looked down at my foot. "And you'll pick that up and dispose of it in a proper waste receptacle. There's no littering on these grounds, either."

"Yes, sir." I said as I picked up the butt and walked away from them. I found a trash can a few hundred feet away. There was a group of kids surrounding it, talking around it like it was the proverbial water cooler they would no doubt one day become acquainted with 10 years down the line.

At this point, the lowest rung on the entertainment totem pole for the evening, JoJo, got up on stage to do her set. JoJo is probably the best-known deaf American singer in the world right now, and copies of her last album, Jojo, has sold well into the tens of thousands as of this writing. She performs her pieces by using sign language to convey her lyrics while she reads a teleprompter that scrolls the lyrics down in time to the music.

JoJo performs her hit single "Baby It's You"

I'll admit that it was different. Not different enough to be interesting, though. If there was ever a time to think that interpretive dance would be a good thing at a rock concert, I was probably thinking this here. As such, she just stood at the teleprompter, gesturing as best she could in time with the music.

Though the crowd, I looked up and say the area where they were keeping the President, the Bush twins, and the First Lady. Clearly not fans of rock music, according to the press, they were surrounded by Secret Sevice Agent goons, and in a way they sort of reminded me of the Tsar Nicholas and the last Russian Royal family when they were in exile. Not a perfect metaphor, for the Bush family are captives here in our own country, confined to a box and a stringent set of rules and guarded from the people by the SS and the Hell's Angels.

Fuel and 3 Doors Down played next after JoJo, without hardly a hitch, except when Fuel frontman Brett Scallions made a unscripted digression between songs. "US Out of Iraq!!" he screamed, "Fuck You, America! And Fuck You George W...." and then after he and his mates were quickly taken out by the Hells Angels protecting the stage, 3 Doors Down got on and quipped, "Well, that was pretty funny, right guys?"

The show closed with Hilary Duff and some final remarks from the President. And honestly, I'm not sure what to say about Miss Duff. It feels like an infernal Mickey Mouse circle-jerk. Now I know that this shit has existed forever, the problem is that before they would sell a few thousand copies to deluded pre-teens and call it a success. Now they sell tens of millions, and are the cutting edge of pop music. And the funny thing is that it's a product that originally broke big at least seven years ago. Hilary Duff is Avril Lavigne, who is Britney, who is Janet Jackson, who is...oh who the fuck cares. I have to give props to the music industry for keeping this thing hot for so long now. Heck, I saw even some of the Hells Angels nodding their heads in time with the music.

George W. Bush took the stage after Hilary, and I knew it would be tough for him. On the one hand, he couldn't get off like an old codger (like me) and say that the kids today listen to shit today not even worth scraping off the shoes of rock musicians like ELP and the Nice. On the other, trying to play it "cool" with the kiddies by saying he actually loved the music would probably induce too much snickering and mirth in an average crowd. Thankfully for Bush, this wasn't an average crowd.

"How 'bout them 3 Doors Down?" Bush said, picking the band least likely to cause Republican men to doubt Bush's own manhood. "They sounded pretty cool to me."

2005-01-19T01:14:00.000-05:00

A New Link to Ye Ol' Blogroll

It's been at least a few months since I've added a link, but Slowpoke is pretty worthy of my praise (yeah, we're still on gloating, covered in the last post). I like the mild absurdist elements that accompany the poltically left-of-center viewpoint of the comics. Caught it from a blog ad on This Modern World.

So by all means, if that's your thing, check it out.

2005-01-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

On Gloating...

One thing I really hate, as a man with exceptional intelligence and a clever and biting wit, is gloating. Or any lack of true humility. I really hate that, because it's just a bunch of self-serving and wish-fullfillment nonsense without, as they say, a viable peg to hang a hat upon.

Which is why I will not proclaim my obvious divine appointment by God (which is redundant, but I don't care) as the guy you should definitely listen to when making NFL Playoff picks. Not that current record of 4-0 is anything approaching a surprise to me, but it might've been, in your ignornace, a bit of a surprise to you. And I don't blame you, my sheep, for doubting me. After all, many people in the media have made "wild guesses" about who would win last weekend, and they were perhaps as much worth to your wallet as last summer's ill-advised week in Vegas, where you lost $20,000, and also, your wife to a strip-club owner after her stunning realization that she really liked lap-dancing the tourists a helleva lot better than she like being a data entry clerk in suburban Cincinnati.

But, the fact remains, you learned from experience. Life is filled with hard lessons. Don't bring your wife to Vegas, and don't trust anyone except for me when if comes to playoff picks. Because I was 4-0 last weekend, and I plan on repeating myself.

2005-01-14T18:10:00.000-05:00

The Sudden Death of WHFS -A Subtle Yet Telling Foreshadowing of the Corporate Takeover of Commercial Radio Now In Progress

With the death of DC's very own WHFS, we may have reached a critical turning point in commercial radio. One that we may find quite impossible to "turn back the clock."

WHFS was a radio station that, until last week, was a cry for the importance of radio anarchy. When no one else dared to, they found the strength and tenacity to play bands like Coldplay, and the Offspring, regardless of what the stiffs over at Clear Channel thought about it. And not only would they play these obscure but vital bands, but they would play them incessantly, sometimes hundreds of times a day. It was like a gigantic fuck you to Corporate America. A fuck you that they were not afraid to repeat hundreds of times a day.

And now it is all over. For WHFS has changed formats. Gone forever are the days of alternatives, for WHFS is now "El Zol 99.1! Siempre de Fiesta!" Whatever the hell that means. But, given the sinisterness of it's sound, I'd say it probably means "The Corporate Takeover of American Radio Has Just Begun!"

This probably also means the death of the HFStival, the annual free-form music festival over at RFK hosted by the radio station that featured bands like Coldplay, and also, the Offspring. These are bands that never would've been able to fill stadiums like RFK if it weren't for the tireless promotion at WHFS. Of all the radio stations in the DC area, only WHFS had the utter gall to bring bands like Coldplay, and the Offspring, to the attention of the masses.

This is a sad day for America, and I fear it signals the end of diversity and quality commercial radio in the United States as corporations suck out all of the originality with cheap plastic little straws.

But all is not lost, yet. We still have DC101, which has the hilarious Elliot in the Morning, and while they may not be quite as diverse as WHFS once was, they still play Limp Bizkit occasionally, and also, Staind. Sometimes, they'll play artists completely outside of their chosen format, like Christina Aguilera, just to spite the corporations. But I fear that it's days may be numbered.

And so, it's with a wounded heart and bitter tears of rage that I have to wave goodbye to WHFS.

Goodbye.

2005-01-14T16:54:00.000-05:00

My NFL Picks This Week

I'm really knocked out by Playoffs this week. Some truly fantastic teams, all fighting in four separate battles and televised to the Nation by the networks this weekend. We have the Patriots. We have the Steelers. We have the Colts. We have the Jets. We have the Eagles. We have the Vikings. We have the Falcons. We have the Rams. And for four of these teams, it will unfortunately mean the End of the Line. For the year. And four teams that beat those previous four teams will go on to the Superbowl, which is the best, and penultimate, football game of the year.

I'm not going to claim that I have some kinda of inside information besides divine information on my picks this week, but I'm going to tell you who's going to win. So without too much further ado, here are my picks.

Further ado, I was thinking to myself today, like wouldn't it be cool if I was wrong about my picks. Like how about if the Jets just totally destroyed the Steelers. I mean, just fucking slaughtered them on national TV. I don't mean like a real slaughter, I mean I was thinking like 56-0 blow-out. Is that even possible? Or if the Colts somehow beat the Patriots? Or if the Vikings slam dunked the Eagles in the 1st Quarter. Or if the Rams took the Falcons to task? Wouldn't that be weird?

Picks:

1.) Eagles vs. Vikes -everybody thinks the Eagles suck now that TO is out of the picture, and that the Vikings are going to walk all over the Eagles and into the Superbowl, despite the season stats. I beg to differ. While the Vikes game against the Packers was weird, and the Vikings have some momentum, the Eagles are my favorite team in the NFL. They made the playoffs again. If they don't make it into the Superbowl for the umpteenth time in a row, I'm going to throw my Eagles hat in the garbage and whine and cry about it for a week. I don't think the Eagles are quite prepared to deal with that, so I don't think they'll be losing this game.

2.) Falcons vs. Rams -Uh...probably the Falcons. I'm not sure if St. Louis quite has it together enough to keep Michael Vick contained, though it should be a closer came that St. Louis' 34-17 loss to Atlanta earlier in the Season. And yeah, I had to look that one up.

3.) Steelers vs. Jets -This week be the most boring game of the week. Steelers.

4.) Patriots vs. Colts -And this will be the best game of the week. Peyton has had a fantastic year, and while matchups with the Patriots have sucked for the Colts the past couple of years, fate might not be enough for the Patriots in the game with half of their players on injured reserve. Losing Ty Law, who seems to be Peyton Manning's #1 Receiver in match-ups against the Patriots, also hurts big. But I have to give the nod to the Patriots again this time, because the Patriots are an extremely smart team, whereas the Colts tend to be pretty stupid about things. I mean, not to be to harsh -I'm sure some of the people managing the Colts know a thing or two about football. But against self-proclaimed "Super-Genius Coach of All Time So Fuck You, Lombardi's Ghost..." Bill Belichick? No. It's impossible to fathom. Patriots win with the sheer size of their brains.

So those are my picks for the week. Stay tuned after the weekend, when you can bask in the warmth of my own glory when I'm proven completely right, and drool over my picks for the Super Bowl. Vegas, take note.

2005-01-13T18:55:00.000-05:00

Why Would Anyone Like Belle & Sebastian?

That's actually kind of a rhetorical question. A friend of mine lent me his copy of "If You're Feeling Sinister" and after listening to a couple of songs I felt compelled to shit all over his taste in music.

This also kinda ties in with the death of WHFS in DC, a alternative music radio station that had a sort of "legendary" status for playing "innovative" music that "pushed the boundaries." Or so the proclaimed right before every commerical break.

But I don't have time for that right now -I'll write my WHFS obit a little later tonight.

Anyway, so my mind's on music, now with the death of the legendary WHFS and all. And I'm listening to "If You're Feeling Sinister" and thinking that this might just be the most horrible pop music I've ever heard. The funny thing about B&S is that they have no mainstream appeal, they tend to get barely mediocre praise from the critics, and people like me that generally like alternative music truly and utterly hate them. So, who actually is so knocked out about them that they're able to sell out medium sized stadiums? I mean, they sound like The Incredible String Band after ingesting a physically crippling amount of downers. They sound like an asshole at a frat party horribly attempting to play a Beatles song on his guitar over some semi-comotose drunk simultaneously attempting to mumble his suicidal yearnings while also trying to take a nap.

Wow, I'm stumped...

2005-01-06T13:10:00.000-05:00

Bill Unbound -It's a Living in the City

This is one of those extremely irregular features occasionally featured on the Apple Coda when I take you on a voyage into the land of Bill, unbound in the City, and let you draw your own conclusions. I've decided to call it Bill Unbound because it becomes hard to build up a simple and coherent theme for a blog post based upon one day in the life, as anyone who's struggled through Ulysses can certainly attest to. So in posts like these, I allow myself to come loose from these chains of single topic posts, and unleash my wrath of multiplicity and yes, perhaps even incoherence.

BLAH...WHAM...What? Soup?....Terror from the Spoons of Heraldry!

Nay. I won't go quite that far. That's too deep of a recess to even begin to plug a keg tap into. But the first real indication that today was going to be a blogging day was when I saw this old dude, totally wrapped up in winter wear, with a hoodie and orange gloves and a big freaking hippie beard, just pull a newspaper out of a burlap bag and just toss it in the middle of the street as he was crossing it. And I mean, the funny thing was that he was about 10 feet away from a trash can. He didn't even have to recycle it -he could've just dropped it in the trash can when he had finished crossing the street with narry a thought. But it was windy, so he decided to just dump a whole newspaper right out on 17th street. The wind picked it up and scattered it all over the street, of course, and some guy who was walking a few steps behind me muttered "nice..."

Nice? Ye Gods, I hoped he was being sarcastic, because if he was too jaded to realize that this was the fucking travesty of the century, I might've thought twice about clocking the newspaper guy, and just going ahead and clocking him instead.

Which would've been quite a spectacle, I think. I mean, clocking this nice suit, rather than the old hippie fucking up the whole hippie thing with his challenge to peace love and recycling and contemporary politeness.

So of course, I just trailed directly behind him by like two paces or so for a few blocks, my eyes boring deep into the back of his head, until he became uncomfortable enough to turn down into the alley behind Potbelly.

I had an appointment to see my dentist that day, so after I checked in and got seated in this huge ass dentist chair. And I when say huge ass, I mean, the things are built like huge ultra-luxury lounge sofas for some reason, and then -for some reason, I'm sitting down in this huge ultra-ass luxary dentist lounge chair, and a local DJ appeared out of thin air and cued up some trance and then purple velvet started growing out of the walls like it was something organic like grass. Only the velvet was growing much much faster than even the most hideously genetically engineered grass would ever unwillingly subject themselves to.

Big bright strobe lights appeared out of nowhere, blinding me temporarily, and I could only calm myself down by telling myself repeatedly that I hadn't quite lost my head, that it was only my retinas that had just gone stark raving mad. As I rubbed my eyes, the dentist and her assistant applied a local anesthetic to my gums.

"Relax...don't do it...when you want to go to it..." the DJ breathed into his mike as he spun some typical trance nonsense. And then they jabbed my mouth repeatedly with a needle.

"Do you feel anything?" the dentist asked me as she stuck the needle into my nerves in the top of my jaw. I felt my nose go numb, pondering the idea that with my nose numb and all, maybe my sense of smell would be lost, perhaps forever, but replied...

"Ah..."

I gasped, with a very slight jiggle of my face to indicate that all was well in my world, but not so definite a motion to cause a slip that might cause an "accidental" brain throttle with the foreign object now in my mouth.

Then they stuck cotton in my mouth, and a little suction device under my tongue, and let me sit for a bit for the numbing to take effect.

The dentist's assistant kept watch over me, waiting for the tell-tale signs of a numb face. I have no idea what those "signs" are, but I bet they look hilarious to an impartial observer. She asked me a few questions about what I what I did for a job, and the usual bullshit. The really cool thing, though, was that with the numbness and the cotton in my mouth I thought I kinda sounded like Sean Connery. It was kinda neat.

"Ahh...I work for the gov'ment, my dear!"

"Really, well that's pretty cool. Do you have any plans for going out on New Year's Eve?"

"Indeed! I plan on engaging on numerous social activities that particular night which will certainly make the ride worthwhile..."

"Must be nice," she said and pouted. "I haven't been out on New Year's in over three years. Do you have children?"

"But of course!" I said, trying to talk through the gauze. "Three children, in fact. All born out of wedlock. After all, I've been screwed more times than a hooker!"

After that, she didn't talk too much to me, but I think she took a particular relish in sucking out all the plaque and detritus out of my face with her little suction straw after that little exchange.

It hurt.

But afterwards, it didn't hurt so much. And my teeth felt cleaner, so I guess it was all for the best.

2005-01-06T11:02:00.000-05:00

Sen. Boxer will Challange the Ohio Vote

Here.

It actually sounds more impressive and controversial than it actually is. It just opens up the floor to a two hour debate about voting irregularities and stuff before the Electoral Collage vote is certified.

But hey, at least it will be talked about, and the media might actually pick it up.

I just haven't been able to pull up anything on the blogs, or the news on the web about this, except for this, so I thought I'd throw it out there.

2005-01-03T19:18:00.000-05:00

I Want To Be A Media Whore

This is my only New Year's Resolution. I know it's selfish -I mean, I'm just not going to get into the traditional pathetic resolution things and giving up something like drinking. Or smoking. Or illegal drugs, because they are awesome. I'm not going to start watching my diet until I'm at least 200 pounds over my target weight, because I'm not that kind of a whore.

But I desperately want to be a Media Whore. Can anyone find me a job? I do tricks...

I desperately want to ask Amber Frey the poignant questions about her relationship with Scott Peterson. Hard hitting questions that will make her cry on camera. And I want to show that I am compassionate and quite understanding of the ordeal she has been put through. Maybe I cut the tape and allow her the time to recompose herself. But then I'll press forward, because this story is important, and the people want responsible journalists covering stories that matter to them, and also, our Nation.

I want to follow up on the Neverland Ranch investigation of Michael Jackson. That certainly didn't get enough coverage the last news cycle. A blip, and then it was gone. I believe that this story has been under-reported, perhaps due to the influence of Hollywood. They probably don't not want to smear Michael Jackson's name any further, and I would probably find that very interesting. I could investigate this, and with a little luck, it could make the next news cycle before the Inaugeration.

I believe that the 2004 election has basically turned a little over 80% of this country into evangelical right-wing maniacs. While I do not necessarily hold the same views as this new majority of Americans do, I completely understand and appreciate their opinions, and believe that a mandate has finally been passed that we should not question. Their message is powerful, and passionate, and very, very engaging. That is encouaging in a political landscape that until recently was dull and uninspiring. And very, very politically correct. I personally would be comfortable moderating discussions between politically correct conformist left-wing nutjobs, and evangelical non-conformist right-wing nutjobs, and would be quick to point out to anyone that cares that I consider these viewpoints to reflect the Red State/Blue State dichotomy currently going on at dinner tables all over America.

I will say "Red State/Blue State dichotomy" until my eyeballs explode live on television.

I want to be a Media Whore. If you are a Media Pimp, please get in touch. My email is in the left column. Or bill.duckwing@gmail.com if you so prefer. I eagerly await your response.

2004-12-30T20:52:00.000-05:00

2004: Year of the Numa Numa Dance

I originally considered writing an in depth rant about all the things that sucked or were cool about 2004.

And by in depth, were talking about 30 single-spaced typewritten pages! That is a lot of suck for one year!

But then I saw this video on Newgrounds, and you know what they say, a webcam lip-sync of "Numa Numa Dance" is worth a half a gazillion notes or written pages attempting to glean the essance of a new dead year.

This video represents 2004 (click on "Watch this Movie" to see what I'm talking about) -half-baked, full of it, at the same time very entertaining.

2004-12-21T18:34:00.000-05:00

The Approaching NFL Post Season Blahs...

To be honest, I haven't been watching football as much this year as I had in previous years. I'll catch a couple Sunday games every week, then read the papers about who one or lost. That's about it. Compare this with previous years where I'd monitor player stats and the injured lists every freaking day, and you get what I'm saying.

I think the main reason for this is that my two teams in the NFL that I'm big on, namely the Pats and the Eagles, are just too competitive to really generate any excitement for me. I expect them to win weak after week, especially put up against a plethora of pretty weak teams (say, the entire NFC east sans Eagles) to really get too involved with the games when it so happens that they get cast here on FOX or CBS during the year.

And with that being said, I'd like to say -shit.

It's not like Terrell Owens getting injured is the end of the world. He might get to play again in Super Bowl, if they make it, and there's super hope in the fact that the NFC isn't the killer league it once was. The Eagles are still a great team in a kinda sorta way overall, except their passers stink, plus the fact that without everyone on the opposing team on defense covering Terrell out there like it was their money means, well -maybe McNabb's passing game will have to be rethought. A lot.

But maybe not. I'm certainly not an offensive coordinator, and I'm sure they got a few tricks up their sleeve. I mean, if McNabb were injured, like real bad, that'd be a fucking travesty, but I know that they must have a backup plan for that, too.

The Patriots debacle last week I think is just a case of bad...something. I think most people, Hunter S. Thompson included, are taking this way too seriously, actually. I mean, Tom Brady had four fucking interceptions, and they still lost by only a point. Granted, it was against the Miami Dolphins, who aren't even close to hot, but still, against nearly everyone, the Patriots aren't really the kind of team that clobbers you into submission. Most of their games are pretty tight -the reason why they win is because they'll play you tough and will match you point for point, but they won't make the mistakes that you will. The Patriots are not the hottest team in the NFL, but they'll make sure you eat a whole pie full of crow before they'll let you start writing those obits.

Regarding the Patriots competition for a place at the Super Bowl, I'd say we have the Colts and the Steelers. And in away, this almost feels like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Patriots beat Colts, Colts beat Steelers, and Steelers beat Patriots. It all depends on who plays who first.

Actually, if only it were that simple. I'd say all three of these teams could beat anyone in the NFL, if the winds are blowing in the right direction and the stars stay fixed in whatever house of good fortune these teams individually ally themselves with. And ultimately, it is up to God, and also, the hideous devil imps employed by Satan, who often cause misfortune and the "accidents" that eventually lead all good players to the Injured Reserve list.

I'm going to shut up now, before I actually do summon up the ghost of Grantland Rice with all of this nonsense. For simplicity's sake, I do think they all have a chance for a Super Bowl ring, and no, I don't any have any inkling of who is the better team, and that is all.

2004-12-17T22:03:00.000-05:00

Wow!

So I finally figured out what was causing the long loading times for this site via my little experiment with socialism. It was Feedburner, a crappy RSS feed service that really isn't necessary at all. It seemed like it required an extremely long communication with their server before it would load the page at all, so I took it off permanently.

Wow!

Sometimes all it takes is a brief conversion to plebeian socialism to figure out what makes things tick, y'know.

2004-12-16T22:13:00.000-05:00

Did we just lose the Washington Nationals?

I'm sorry, we've been knocked around for years, and it certainly isn't going to stop with the DC council reneging on a deal with MLB to publically finance a new stadium on the Anacostia River.

I was kinda amazed by Michael Wilbon's column about the whole thing, saying he knew someone who had ties saying that Linda Cropp had an ace in her sleeve with this or something.

Unbelievable.

Y'know, I accept the fact that the DC Council was duplicitious about the agreement between Mayor Anthony Williams and MLB, but at the same time I got to fault Williams for not taking an accurate pulse of the city.

Almost as soon as the deal got made, people started comming out of the woodwork with signs and posters to protest the deal, and I knew we were going to have some trouble with the stadium right then and there.

MLB isn't even biting a bit. They feel hornswaggled, and rightly so. So it's up to the DC Council, because in effect by sticking to the Dec. 31st deadline, baseball is giving the District another chance.

They can either vote again on another proposal, and lose some face. But they end up going down as being a bunch of stuckup bluffers, and having their bluff being called. And as everybody knows, that's absolutely the worst way to go in politics. They equivalent of annoucing a group of poker players, "Holy shit, you doubled your bet after I doubled mine! Fuck you, I fold!"

Not a perfect analogy, by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, the reality is far stupider.

Or they can be jackasses and hold firm, and cost the city another baseball team for another 30 years. And I mean, think about it -we've already been begging for thirty. We've already been whining forever about this, but now we're whiny and a bunch of liars. I'm sure the MLB will keep us in the the ol' address book for when they need to relocate another team in the future.

Still, despite my premonitions, I'm actually pretty stunned by this. I have nothing else to say, except that I'll be putting my old template back up probably tomorrow or something, so you commie haters can rejoice.

Edit: Even though I love the commie sig below. Man, I'll miss that...

2004-12-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

The Plebeian Uprising is So Totally Not Working Out

But we're getting better, I think. I'm sorry...I'm tired. I need a nap. Staging a peasant revolt takes time and energy, and I'm trying, but there's only so much Trotsky I can read in an evening and still hold a full-time job and not pass out from sheer exuberance.

We haven't had a peasant revolt in ages. Did you know that? I mean, you look at America, like the history, even gleaning a bit back into the lost days of the 20th Centruy before everything changed and whatnot, and still...

Not a ton of peasant revolts to even really comment on.

I mean, even back in the uber-capitalist supra-reactionary Middle Ages in Europe, one of the most hotly debated topics is the Peasant Revolt in Flanders of 1381. While mostly was a revolt against taxes, and...oh shit.

Well, I mean, as long as we don't have to pay taxes and shit anymore under Bush, we're all cool!

I won't even go there. Because obviously spending obscenely huge amounts of money while not taxing the populace while relying on the goodwill of borrowers knocked out by your historical superpower status actually makes a ton of a lot of sense.

It's all faith, yo!

I want kids to join in on this Uprising thing. That's the big thing, because I've given up on the others. And also because I think "Teenage United Workers Super Wild-azz Riot" is a pretty cool way to induce a little generational alienation.

But we need some real slogans. I'm racking my brain right now, and aside from the communist teddy bears I keep seeing on the internet and on late night tv, I'm for the moment out of ideas. I mean, we can't really go with Josef Stalin or Mao as the symbol of our new unity, and Trotsky, while a little less blood-stained, always looks a little too unnerved to feature too much in our party propaganda, like a really stern and insecure Colonel Sanders.

So we need a logo, a slogan, and a mascot.

Oh, boy.

Oh yeah, gotta link to this before I call it a night. It'll take about an hour to get through, but I'm willing to consider that a good waste of leisure time just as long as you pledge to spend the rest of the evening devising some form of plebeian propaganda for the masses.

2004-12-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

Holy Fucking Mother Of Lenin's Ghost!

I'll admit, y'know, that I was a little blind to all of this. Actually, a lot of us were. For many conservatives, liberalism is da new communism, or terrorism, or whatever. Y'know? Actually, this isn't new at all -in fact we've been demonized for years, but y'know what? Well, now they have a mandate, and so there's absolutely no holding back!

So comrades! Get your fucking hammers on! Join the Revolution!

I have officially dubbed myself Chairman of the Plebeian Socialist Workers Party. We will be getting together this Saturday for a Trotsky reading at my place, and donations of course will be accepted. But, rather than give me your hard earned money, I ask you -why not buy a bale of hay? Or seeds? Or an ass to hitch your plough?

To beat the conservatives, we must beat them at their own game! We must trump their means to capital, and we can only do this by living completely independent from the services provided by big business. Lest this seem completely impossible to the city dwellers out there, I would remind them that I myself am a city dweller, and it does not seem incredulous to me.

Because we can beat the cities. With hammers we can smash their paved streets up into little rocks. Then we can clear the little rocks with shovels and shovel them deep into the various ditches and valleys of the land. With ploughs and asses we can seed the fertile dirt underneath. And with language we can feed the minds of those hesitant to join us.

So listen up.

And grab your lattes, and your beads and rattles. Reject Jesus Christ. And get ready to sweat, because the Plebian Socialist Workers Party will be hitting up your town soon!

2004-12-10T18:56:00.000-05:00

I'm Totally Writing the "Ocean's Twelve" Sequel in 2007

I am so sexed up about the new Steven Soderberg movie, "Ocean's Twelve," that I've started writing my own little screenplay, which I think will blow Hollywood away. Here's some excepts:

"Brad Pitt, I've got this crazy idea -for a new heist. But we're getting old, so it's going to be difficult for our original eleven, plus Catherine Zeta-Jones, which makes twelve, to pull this caper off. So we're going to need to dig deep into the underworld and recruit a whole lot more people. A small city's worth of people."

"How many more people, George Clooney?"

"Brad, it'll take exactly 25, 988 more people. That's a lot of people to recruit. And we'll have to change the name of our gang again.

'Ocean's Twenty-Six Thousand!'"

Most of the plot of course, will be in the exposition. Probably at least 4 or 5 hours of a 5 and a half hour movie, at least. We'll presume that Danny Ocean -actually, we're going to change his name right now. There is no way twenty-six thousand people would follow a guy with a name like Danny. It's too informal and goofy. So, his name is John now. John Ocean. A Biblical force of fucking nature.

Brad Pitt: "I don't know, John...that sounds like an awful lot of people to recruit and keep control of..."

"I know Brad..." (yeah, I'm going to keep calling him Brad, because I don't remember the name of the character from the movie). "It won't be easy, it may take years - decades, even - to run down my list of twenty-six thousand names and scedule a time where we could all get together to discuss this heist. But if we pull it off, Brad...well, wow..."

And then we could cut to a the obligatory Hitler set-up with John Ocean screaming in German to throngs of people chanting his name in unison.

"Mein People!!" John Ocean screams at a lecturn in front of a dizzying array of accompices (maybe using CGI effects, like in Alexander) "Twenty-Six Million! Mein Twenty-Six Million! The population of a medium-sized European Country!"

That would be cool.

2004-12-08T21:55:00.000-05:00

Dennis Miller Sucks!

I won't try to grok too much into what his show is about, but I can only say that Dennis Miller has aged badly. Why is he still on the air? Well, I guess the CNBC gig is not the once high spot he held on HBO or whatever made him supra-uber famous, but still...

I mean, his news thing that he uses to open his show, which is kinda like a cross between his rants on HBO and the news thing he did on SNL, it almost reminds me of like, well...like vaudeville or something.

"Here we have Ted Kennedy and his liberal monkeys balancing rubber balls with their snouts! Get it? And here in my hands I hold a Boston cream pie! I'll leave it up to the kids out in TV Land to decern what kinda post-modern pastiche I am thinking up with this ultra hot premium matieral, ladies and gents!"

And I am so not a hipster about shit either -like I'm very much well into my thirties, thank you very much, and I still very much totally into the Beach Boys and Emerson, Lake and Palmer and Culture Club and stuff, so fuck you.

Are you kids still doing that hackey sack shit out on the commons in college? Like, I owned that game, back in the day. Back then, we were less fucked up on the drugs and more fucked up on transcendental meditation and natural highs like trees and grass and hackey sacks. We blew out our minds either naturally, or else heavily medicated. I don't remember now. That's how far back I seed, man. That's just how far back...

The A.J. Jacobs interview thingy was actually kinda funny though, totally thanks to A.J., because he said "intercourse" and also, "wife." Jolly good show, young ironic non-fictionalist!

Anyway, I'm writing this up during the Charles Barkley interview, which is supra interesting. I think he said he was going into Alabama politics or something. I think Dennis chided him by saying he'd be stirring up shit by entering the political scene in Alabama. I don't get it. Did I miss something?

So Neal Pollack is going to talk about "Ocean's Twelve?" Because that was the intro to the "Varsity Club." Holy shit what kinda suck is that? Or was that just a promo?

No, they're talking about steroids, which is a nice kinda seg.

So let me seg here, because we were talking about Dennis Miller, and I'm not sure if I'm qualified to comment on him anymore since he shot his career all to hell by endorsing Bush and by endorsing Judeo-Christian values, which are of course both anthenma to the beliefs held by the cool in our elistist culture.

And until Dennis Miller decides to "go cool" and reject his newish-found conservativism, I'm afraid he's got less than a nano-chance to get his ass back on to things like HBO, or writing editorials for the American Prospect. Maybe c'est le temps to stick a finger in da wind, to tell which way it blows, eh Denise?

2004-12-04T20:19:00.000-05:00

I Always Get Chapped Lips in the Month of December

It's true. I totally don't get this stuff, it's always like this seasonal thing that goes on that I have no input or control over. I always think to myself, "Maybe this is the year that I don't get chapped lips," but to no avail. And since I never keep a thing of chapstick hanging around year-round, I always end up getting fucked the first time December rolls around.

It's the suck.

A couple of other things. I got about halfway through my novel for Nanowrimo this year. I'm not exactly pround, nor tired. But I don't think it's all that bad, and hopefully I'll get around to finishing the thing in the next couple of months.

Also, Neal Pollack is going to be on Dennis Miller on CNBC, which should be fun. I hope he finds a way to work in what he wants to say on the program.

2004-12-02T23:28:00.000-05:00

Let's Encourage Dan Rather to Get All Weird and Stuff as He Approaches Retirement

Well, not exactly retirement. We all know Dan is going to stick around for awhile doing investigative work, or whatever. But still, given all of the crazy shit I've been hearing about this guy lately, we should all give him our approval in the event that he does decide to go all Howard Beale on us and play the bonkers card out on national television.

Of course, that almost certainly won't happen. While I've never been a huge fan of national network news, and almost never watch it if I can help it, I've made it a point to catch CBS's Evening News lately, mostly because of Tom Brokaw's retirement (I know that's a little weird, I'll just say that his retirement has proactively influenced me to actually care about network news, at least for a week), and as I previously stated, the focus on the internet over Dan Rather as a truly insane nutjob with palpable liberal bias issues.

Well, from my standpoint, I don't know what you guys are talking about. CBS Evening News is just as boring as any other network newscast. And Dan Rather certainly isn't pushing any boundaries to the nth degree that any cable newscaster you could name doesn't do on a daily basis. I mean people can get outraged and shit about Rathergate, or whatever they're calling it, but when sites like this get Google Ranked into the stratosphere, I begin to get concerned. I mean, if Dan Rather, who is no less boring than Jennings or Brokaw's replacement Brian Williams, is America's most politicized journalist, then -well I don't even know what to make of the claim. It gets me a bit frazzled with its sheer lunacy.

Some people claim that network news anchors are susposed to be boring and placcid and flaccid and are not meant to ruffle feathers, and these same people claim that Dan Rather somehow breaks the mold of the news anchor in two different ways. One -he's too liberal. Two -he too weird.

I'll say two things to that. One, he probably does have a liberal ideology. I guess that's probably true. But in the time I've watched him, he hasn't deviated in either under reporting or over reporting any story that's been already beaten to death, and then buried, and then mourned over 60 thousand times by the time it hits the evening news. On the second thing, I do think he has this kinda haunted look to him, like a guy that's been beaten fair and square. But that's a subjective view, one probably reinforced by other people's opinion of him on the net. Still, given the fact that he's a man about to retire in disgrace, I wouldn't consider that all that weird.

I don't have any real great respect for Dan Rather, besides the notion that he seems to be a talented journalist. And for that I perhaps fault myself -I just haven't followed CBS news in great enough detail to generate any kind of opinion about him. But I almost wish I had. Dan Rather gave us one of the really Great American non-sequitor catch phrases with his story about how he was mugged in New York by a guy who introduced himself by saying "Kenneth, what's the frequency?"

I personally like the idea of a guy who can bring an anecdote like that to the attention of the nation without feeling all that weird about it. And that's why, if I were Dan Rather, nearing my retirement, I would just go ahead pull an all out Howard Beale on the American public. I mean, that's just me, but why not?

I mean, if he does have some sort of agenda, as everybody claims, why not go public with it right before they put you out to pasture?

2004-11-27T19:18:00.000-05:00

C'est Le Temps

I have been perplexed, and yes, even frustrated by the amount of time it takes blogspot to load this page lately on my browser. I assume it's general for everyone else trying to get onto the site, so I've decided to take the time to get this site hosted somewhere else.

I've considered getting on MT or bloghorn or similar software, but honestly, I like the look of this site generally. If I was a web designer, I'm sure I could tweak it until all of the cows came home to make an infinite number of essential improvements. But I'm not, and more than likely, a move to MT or something else would just wind up taking me many hours to move and upload all of my archives and posts and I would probably end up making the site look a lot worse than it already looks now. Not my idea of an ideal trade off or making a good use of my time.

No, like I said, my biggest gripe is with the load times. Blogspot is easily one of the internet's busiest servers, and while they've gotten a lot better about things over the past year, the size of my own portion of my achives, the pictures, and comunication with blogrolling, blogsnob, everything else really, puts a lot more stress on it than blogspot is really willing to give me for free . Hence, my page now takes about 10 minutes to load. Time for a change.

At this point, I'm just toying with the idea. I've done this before in the past, when Blogger was really slow, but this time I'm serious. So far, I think the best idea is to register a domain name and find some cheap webhosting, but I'm open to suggestions of what's best way to go about it, as this is my first foray into the wild world of web publishing, really. I've found webhosting for about $5/month that give me way more space and bandwidth than I think I'd ever use in this lifetime. I've also found a few register sites that do a kinda of package registration/webhosting deal.

Anyway, I hope to make a decision within the next couple of weeks.

2004-11-24T20:41:00.000-05:00

Mechs! In Real Paintings!

Hey, guys! I've been kinda of on hiatus, trying to finish off the novel thing (which, I must say, is coming off pretty well. How the hell did that happen?). Anyway, if you're really bored, go here. It's a Something Awful photoshop thingy again, the idea behind this one to photoshop mechs (which are basically just Japanese anime robots) into classic paintings. I particularly enjoyed the Vietnam War Memorial one, and the Escher self-portrait. But the technical skill is many of these is simply amazing. Go. Check it out now.

Can't get enough. Here's one depicting Great Moments in Railroad History.

Oh yeah, and have a uber Happy Thanksgiving!

2004-11-17T23:41:00.000-05:00

Notes on the Subtitles

My long standing subtitle for this site, The Apple Coda, went something like this:

"Holistic Medication for the Brain"

Which got me spam-listed on any number of home-remedy sites that made a huge point of saying they linked to my site on in their emails (but actually didn't -they just wanted me to visit their site, and maybe buy a few hundred dollars worth of "holistic remedies").

Spam is annoying.

But anyway, before I got into the "Holistic Medication" thing, I would change up the subtitle to something or other every couple of days. Recently, I found a great new quote via The Poor Man, who links to this thing:

There are some myths and untruths surrounding the role God plays in our daily lives. To say that religion and politics do not mix, is certainly a myth, unless you ask a liberal. Anything that affects a Christian (and voting is one of them) — enters into the religious realm. Trying to separate the two is like trying to separate oil from a glass of water, it's impossible to do.

This was a fantastic quote, so I decided to edit it a bit into a single line and make it my subtitle for a couple of days. Then I got the tub of cement idea, so...I edited the quote a little more...

I'm a little annoyed that the quote takes up so much of the page, but oh well. I'll change it to something hopefully shorter soon. But really, it's just one of those really great sincere fantastic quotes you find from time to time on the net.

In conclusion, I urge you to read a little bit more of The Poor Man, and also, Kaye Grogan.

Reading them together is like trying to combine oil and water into a perfectly homogeneous mixture. And boy, when you try to separate those two...

Sorry, I'm a scientist. It still cracks me up.

2004-11-17T22:59:00.000-05:00

The Kerry Kampaign Follies!

Well, y'know, I've generally been of the opinion that Kerry, while he didn't run a perfect campaign, really did do his best to beat George Bush. I probably would never have believed that if I hadn't seen how well he performed at the debates, but I've got a fantastic imagination. Honestly, I would've found something positive to have said about Kerry days before the election, if only because of the fact that he was running against George Bush.

This DailyKos story, though, in which Kerry decided not to spend up to $15 fucking million dollars in campaign contributions, electing to save it up for a rainy day, has my jaw dropping. $15 fucking million dollars that could've been spent on underfunded Democratic candidates across the country in very tight Senate and House races, most of which we lost, from his very own fucking campaign.

He sat on it.

Now I won't pretend to know why. Kos suggests a sleeper fund for a possible 2008 Presidential bid for Kerry, or maybe even a little something for the Democratic commitees and future DNC Chairman Tom Vilsack to win over the party establishment to ensure Kerry gets the 2008 bid.

I just hope that Kos is totally wrong in his speculations. While I do think the Kerry Campaign wasn't a complete disaster, and I'm trying to resist the temptation to posion our own well as best I can, a 2008 bid for President from John Kerry is an unmitigated walking disaster waiting to happen. It is a disaster designed to cost us even more seats in 2006 as we sit on our butts and watch and wait for Senator John Kerry to re-emerge as our savior in 2008 with the approval of the DNC and the $15 million "surplus" already spent greasing their own asses.

And I really am trying to stay away from putting on the tinfoil, but if the Democratic establishment consciously decided to put away $15 million in campaign contributions for this election into some kind of a rainy day fund for Kerry 2008, yknow, just in case Kerry 2004 wasn't going to work out -well, then, they need to fucking go. Now.

2004-11-10T19:46:00.000-05:00

Bad Boys, Hey R.E.M. Fucking Sucks Right Guys, and I Guess I Have Joined Ranks with the Cultural Elite!

Well, I was working long and hard, practically slaving away at my novel for National Novel Writing Month, when I had the notion to check out for a bit and see what was going on in cultural internetland.

Not a hell of a lot, apperently.

So anyway, just a few observations. The first thing that caught me up was the commercial for Bridget Jones' Diary Part 2. Now I don't know really anything of the plot for the first one, as I think I was "forced" to watch it with my girlfriend at the time, and I must've done a good job blotting most of it out of my memory as that's the only think I remember about it. I did remember that Hugh Grant was in the first one, I think (he's been in a lot of "chick" movies, though, so maybe I'm blurring him into all of them, I'm not really sure). The commercial, anyway (and this is taking way too long to set up, I know), poses the question -is Bridget going to fall for "bad boy" Hugh Grant again. If Hugh Grant is any woman's conception of a "bad boy," I think we've all been taking the bad boy shit far too seriously. I guess in this world view, John Travola as Danny in Grease also counts as a bad boy. I guessing, but there's worse shit out there than those two. Iggy Pop comes to mind. Actually that reminds me, I'll be checking myself into a methadone clinic next week, so posting might be kinda sporadic.

Also, wherefore all of the internet R.E.M. bashing? This is just the latest one I've seen, but over the last couple of years, REM trashing -ironically or no- has become a pretty popular sport. It's like a cool new club where all the cool people can hang out without reprimands. Nope, not here. I've gererally run over the positive end of the course with REM over the years -rabid fan to occasional listener -and yeah, they're just a band. They're not perfect or anything. I absolutely hate "Everybody Hurts" with the fucking passion of a lonely leper, and they've had some other stinkers, too, but seriously, why the hate, people? It guess it's just that they seem so irrelevant to the popular culture today, that it kinda makes me scratch my head in the same way I would if someone said that they had bought the latest Herman's Hermits album and thought it was a big waste of money.

Third, and seriously, conservatives need to shut up about the new cultural "mandate" of the moral majority, and liberals need to seriously shut up about their newfound cultural elitism. Ted Rall, in particular. I slime Ted Rall because of this fine little rant, but also because he slammed REM at one point. I mean, in general, I think Rall is great. Really. I mean, he's "offensive," and he really has a rotten attitude about pretty much everything, but he's also a liberal who's completely unapologetic about pissing off the politically correct. Which is rare. I mean, shitting on Pat Tilman after he's dead, and making fun of the 9/11 widows who spoke at the Republican convention takes a shitload of balls. But he's fagging it up by saying we got to respect those uber trendy dinks in Manhattan and other big cities as being intellectually superior to those who don't live in big cities. And worse, he's just being dishonest. Yokels in the Red States are stupid because of a lack of access to information? Hey, I've just heard that the Red States do have internet access and cable tv (and in the parts that don't have it yet, there's satellite internet and tv!) And our big "high quality" big city newspapers contain just as much trite shit as their small dinky ones. They just carry more AP wire stuff, while our papers pay their own shitty staff to report the exact same stories day after day. There's no such thing as "high quality" media. Our alternative paper, the Washington CityPaper, is by far the worst "alternative" newsweekly I've ever seen in any city, large or small. And it has virtually no competetion in a major media market. But they all suck. Ted Rall, a cartoonist carried mainly by the alternative newsweeklies, has pointed that out many times in the past himself.

And I certainly didn't move to a major city because I had some deep-rooted desire to experience "real" culture or be intellectually stimulated in a way I wasn't back home, as Rall suggests as the reason why most of the nations best and brightest move to the big cities. If I wanted that I probably would've just gone ahead and studied abroad (France, maybe? Is that stereotypically intellectually stimulating enough to contrast with the boring unstimulating Heartland? I don't know) during some part of my time in college. I moved here because I wanted a job in bio-medical research, so I moved to one of exactly three areas in this country where there are concentrated jobs in the field of bio-medical research. I didn't move because I thought the people I left behind were "conformists", or thought they were far too stupid to be seen hanging around with such a high-minded intellectual such as moi -I moved because I could get a higher-paying job that supported my education elsewhere. It was as simple as that.

Also, in my last ironic contradiction tonight of my own cultural liberalism, I urge you to read Gene Lyons latest review of the Left Behind novel series in this month's Harpers, and then go out and buy the series and read them for yourself. I'm pretty sure I'm never laughed as hard at a book review before as I did at Lyons' quoting some of the passages in these books. Anyone who names their protagonists "Rayford Steele," and "Hattie Durham," includes unborn fetuses amoung the raptured, has Jesus chastise the Antichrist for preaching evolution (on national tv, no less, as apparently the Apocalypse will be Televised), and has Jesus appear as an overweight costumed professional wrestler in a flowing white robe on a white horse (the reviewer makes the case that it's puzzling why Jesus would have to wear a get-up like that while riding a horse unless he was riding it side-saddle like 'a 19th century gentlewoman') -I mean, Tim LaHaye is a fucking genius.

"It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times." begins Nicolae, the third book of the series!

A "drop-dead gorgeous" woman named Hattie? Seriously, whether intentionally or unintentionally hillarious, these have to be must-reads for the New World Order.

2004-11-08T23:24:00.000-05:00

Keep the Faith

I've kinda resigned myself to the fact that, for the next month or so, that whatever happens, the political situation really cannot get much worse than it is. So I'm going to post, at best, very sporatically here the next month or so, maybe longer.

Generally, I tend write my best stuff when things are looking bleak, I guess. Therefore, I'm focusing on writing my novel for National Novel Writing Month, and a bunch of other stuff that's come up that I won't bother you with.

And seriously, I really don't know what to add about the election and stuff. It sucks. We're seriously in some mojo trouble with a capital T, but it hasn't become completely horrible yet.

I think.

I mean, if it gets really horrible out there, just do your best. I'll do my best. And please, make yourself heard somehow.

I'll be back at some point, and at this point all I can do is hope. I gotta hope that the President tries a little harder this time around. And if he doesn't, he'll hear from me, but before that I'm sure he'll be hearing a lot from other people that care about how things are run in America more than I do.

And there are a ton of people, people like you, who are like that. I can only applaud you for that. I love this country because of that. And I really hope, I pray, that people like you never get discouraged.

Keep the faith.

Edit: If you need inspiration, music can help. While you all have your own music preferences, O.A.R always gets me in a good mood, and they're one of the few bands to really get me up to out-skank the Man, politically speaking. The offer a couple minutes of each song from their entire music catalogue on the web (choose how you want to display the player, then click the ofarevolution player on the bottom of the screen), so check em out.

2004-11-04T20:11:00.000-05:00

Well, Golly Fuck! A Post-Reaction Election Post...

You know, I was totally going to just go ahead and retire this blog after John Kerry won the Presidency. I thought it had run it's course, I figured the country would be back on the right track, and pretty much all of that. A sane government is a good government, and it would feel good to leave well enough alone. Retire Bill Duckwing, write the Great American Novel, and well, y'know.

On the plus side, the Democratic Party has such limited options in governing our Nation at this point, that I feel in a way it can't help but unite us. Fewer paths to diverge from in the wood, you know. We could secede the Blue States from the Union and combine with Canada to form the United States of Canada -of course we'll give you amnesty in a heartbeat if you're a Red State Democrat forced to emigrate to our new country illegally.

The Senate, our only real scope of influence, has been pretty much stipped of the Southern Zell Miller boll-weevils that used to plague our party, so it'll be easier for Harry Reid or whoever becomes the new Minority Leader to keep our ducks in a row and to strategize a clearer message. To put it another way, our congressman are pretty much only confined to their Blue State Democrat base at this point, so the opportunity to hammer out a stronger message becomes easier to manage without having to worry about lunatics on our side screaming "Spitballs!!! Just Spitballs! And faggots fucking!!! Like Dogs!"

And we've got a fucking force of nature on our hands with the meteoric emergence of Barack Obama, easily the strongest and most charismatic politician I've seen in my lifetime. I'm serious, I've never seen a public speaker as engaging or as eloquent or as enticing to the general thread of human appeal the way Barack Obama is. But as someone on the SomethingAwful forums suggested -all we have left is a six-shooter, and Obama is our last bullet (for all practical purposes of this analogy). We have to be cautious and make sure we know when the time is right to fire that last shot.

That said, I'm shocked and appalled by the outcome of this election. But I'm not going to suck on grapes about it. While this election has given me a horrible (and hopefully false) impression of the America people, since we've already made it through four years of this Fuckwad already, we might, barring some Apocalyptic freak-out, get through four more. And we might take refuge in the fact that there could possibly be worse Republicans out there serving as our President than George Bush. Imagine a President Tom Coburn, for instance (newly elected Senator from Oklahoma), or a President Alan Keyes, or a President Jim DeMint(also a newly elected Senator from South Carolina), all of whom I think have now taken this election to be a public mandate calling for the public crucifixion of doctors who perform abortions and homosexuals. Hey, you know what I'm saying? Huh? Think about that for a second, as I imagine since they're all Republicans they'd all be easily elected President in this Country! It could be worse! Come to think of it, maybe if one of these yahoos gets the nomination in 2008, we'll look back on the next four years like they were just a big slice of fucking heaven!

But I want to get back into a kinda of constructive assessment. Put the Democrats who say that to win back all of the Evangelical fucktards out there who are ready for the Apocalypse and who voted Bush we need to move further to the Right out of your head. They ain't swinging back our way ever. And honestly, I don't want them in my party. That Big Tent theory we have only stretches so far before it begins to rip.

Don't go too far into libertarianism. That's hard for me, because my own politics tend to drift into the libertarian mode on a lot of issues, mostly social, but also economic. Not quite Ann Rand, but close enough at times. Unfortunately, libertarianism is the biggest fat loser on the planet when it comes to American politics. Sure -the no taxes part of libertarianism is great and all, but Americans really love their subsidies and state pork entitlements and shit. And if you want to convince Americans that you're a Satan worshipper who wants to enslave their children to the psychotic influence of mara-hoo-gee (this drug educator guy came to my school when I was a kid and for some reason kept pronouncing it like 150 times just like that -so it still tends to pop up in my head from time to time), say you're a social libertarian. Works like a charm.

Don't think like Timothy Noah. He actually used to be one of my favorite writers for Slate and a big reason why I became a regular reader. Then, at some point right before the Iraq War started, his brain just totally snapped, and now he's easily one the most vague and funny Bush apologists writing on the net. Read him for derision or laughs if that's the kinda thing you like -I don't there's anybody that reads him for anything else for now. I was originally going to cite him just for this, but this one also came out today. What fun!

Above all, Don't Panic!(tm)

It's not the end of America's political sanity, it's just the beginning of the end.

2004-11-02T17:58:00.000-05:00

The Apple Coda's Super Election Night Mega-Post

I can't promise I'll be up all night if the election is too close to declare a winner, but I'll try to update as much as I can throughout the night. I'll mostly be staying put on MSNBC, put I'll flip around FoxNews, CNN, and a couple of the Networks to get as much of a vibe from as many different people as I can. I'll also, surf the net and post any links I find interesting.

And it's 6:00, and the polls have already closed in certain parts of Indiana and Kentucky. And away we go.

Update (6:20 PM): Holy crap -everybody's getting attacked tonight! So far, I've lost Kos, Electoral-Vote.com, Slate, and Zogby. Heh, maybe some of that traffic will trickle down tonight.

Via Atrios, some of the exit polling numbers, from Slate, which of course have to be taken with a monstrously huge grain of salt.

Update (6:35 PM): I'm going to get on the cliche bandwagon for now. For now, I'm "guardedly optimistic..." I'm am interpreting all of the exit polling data, along with the Zogby data predicting a plus 300 point Electoral Vote lead, with a "grain of salt." And I encourage you, have you not done so, remember not to get "too overconfident" and "GOTV! GOTV! GOTV!" C'mon, there's still at least 20 minutes left on the East Coast (of course, if you live in the rest of the country, you got a bit more time, but "time is running out!")

Update (7:15 PM): Some big surprises here. Indiana, Georgia, and Kentucky all go for Bush. Vermont goes for Kerry. Let me check my pulse. Okay.

Update (7:53 PM): They called West Virginia pretty quickly for Bush, which is a bit of a bummer, because I was hoping Kerry would be a bit more competetive there. But it was a Bush state, and nobody was really figuring Kerry would actually win it. My optimism is started to become a bit more guarded.

Update (8:50 PM): Absolutely nothing going on right now. But 9:00 PM draws near. I'm getting a little nervous.

Update (9:30 PM): I think the networks are calling it way too conservative with some of the states. For instance, Pennslyvania -the exit polls combined with how the tallies that are comming out show a clear win for Kerry there. Why the hesitation? At this point, I'd like to see more come out in Florida and Ohio, or at least some good news here. Anything. Going to be a long night, whether intentionally or not.

Update (9:50 PM): Ralph Nader is getting a small tiny neglegiable amount of votes (thousands compared to hundreds of thousands for Bush and Kerry) according to the vote tallies in Florida. But if the difference leads to a Bush victory in the hundreds or thousands, I promise will personally beat the crap Ralph Nader.

Update (9:52 PM): Also, I've got to say, comparing the exit polls with the vote tallies in so far, that Kerry has won New Hampshire tonight.

Update (10:03 PM): Shit. Miami-Dade is only slightly going for Kerry. 54%. And with 64% of the vote already in from Miami-Dade, the hold-out of the Democratic counties, I've got a bad feeling about Florida. It's going to be a fucking long night.

Update (10:50 PM): Well, you know, I was kinda hoping for a short night, but with so many urban preciencts not yet reporting, we still have a long way to go. No such luck, but I think Kerry is still very much in contention. Kerry is closing the gap in Ohio and counting. He might lose Florida, but I think the end tally will be far too close for comfort. Joe Scarborough is almost ready to call the election for Bush, but I think he's just ready for an early nap. No dice, Joe. And they finally call Pennslyvania for Kerry (and Arizona for Bush). Cool.

Update (10:58 PM): Youth vote are out in numbers, it's just that as a percentage of the increased turnout, it's still low. Exit polling show they only made up 17% of the electorate. Damn.

Update (11:16 PM): Alan Keyes is a nutjob. That's all. And California and Washington state go for Kerry. Absolutely no surprises yet tonight. Looks like the polls pretty much got it for the mood of the electorate tonight.

Update (11:35 PM): Kos ready to call it for Bush, apparently. I doubt it -there are still huge fucking lines in Ohio, and while I don't know if it's going to be enough to make up for the Bush lead, it's possible. The newscasters and pundits believe that Bush needs to respect the fact that the nation is very divided. I'm sure that's going to happen if Bush does win re-election. I'm certainly not going to say Bush has won it -really. The popular vote tally doesn't look good, but I think Kerry is still going to win New Hampshire plus all of the other Gore states from 2000. But it's still spooky. Us Kerry folks need some good news before we go to bed.

Update (11:55 PM): And still no good news yet. Florida goes Bush. It's a crimp, especially when you look at the stats for Ohio, but Ohio isn't in Bush's column yet -not by a long shot. And Kerry is looking to take back almost all of the Gore states (exception -New Mexico) -we're kinda sucking on the congressional races, but y'know, what are you going to do.

Update (12:20 AM): Well, that's all for tonight. They're obviously not going to call any of these other states tonight, so I'll check it out tomorrow morning with the rest of you and see how it stacks up. I was hoping against hope for an early decision, but oh well. Thanks a fucking lot, America.

2004-11-01T20:15:00.000-05:00

John Kerry For President

I was totally going to fuck with you guys, and write something ironic like "Ralph Nader for President." And I had it all lined up -"You want total security? Ralph Nader will give you total security, as nothing will ever be imported into this country again during a Nader Presidency."

But, unfortunately, I realized that endorsements are serious affairs. And since I will be voting for John Kerry in my imagination, I figured out that it would make sense to make a formal endorsement here on my site.

The reasons for why I am voting for John Kerry easily number in the thousands. Perhaps millions. Imagine that for one moment. Millions of reasons for voting for someone...

Pretend that someone already took out the time to make a list for all the reasons to vote for John Kerry in advance on paper. It would easily take you the rest of your life to read through all of them and make up your mind. Easily. And then you wouldn't be able to vote for John Kerry anymore, because you'd only be down to #4632 or so when the polls close on election day. And it'd all be moot, because you'd still have millions of reasons left to go.

So a summary on the reasons to vote for John Kerry is essential. Here's a couple.

1.) John Kerry Grew Up Like 25 Years Ago! -John Kerry made the transition from activist peacenik to legislator fairly quickly. I respect that. I love the argument people make that since John Kerry smoozed with Jane Fonda when he was younger, he's obviously still a fucking hippy. And then they defend George W. Bush, you was obviously a total frat boy fuckwad for most of his life, and give him a free pass when he hasn't even shown an iota of evidence that he isn't still a snarky uber-asshole who thinks running our country is just a game. Fucking over the other side was fun back when Clinton was President, but I'm getting sick of it, and it's time to elect someone who shows an interest in taking diplomacy with other nations seriously.

2.) John Kerry has Great Hair! -Honestly, John Kerry has the best hair I've ever seen in a potential president. I mean, Bush and Clinton have practically the same hair, a scary curly fuck-mop of a hair-do. And of course Bush Sr.'s hair was way to wispy to be Presidential. Honestly, I think John Kerry's hair is a force of nature. No President in my lifetime has ever come near it in volume and definition. It's time to have a President with Great Hair. This is the most important election in my lifetime -I'll be fucked I'm going to be stuck with another President with shitting hair for another four years.

3.) John Kerry is not Adolph Hitler! -It'll be nice to have a President for a change that does not evoke comparisons to Adolph Hitler. There is no obvious evidence that suggests that Kerry is an anti-Semite, or un-necessarily authoritarian. Who knows, maybe Godwin's Law applied to American Politics will become an obsolete notion under a Kerry Administration. Well, one can hope, right?

4.) John Kerry Will Dope Our Children Up with Pot and LSD! -Probably the coolest thing about a John Kerry Presidency would be the notion of revitalizing the Acid Tests of the 60's by doping our children up by lacing kids flouride with LSD. Researchers have claimed for decades that children in schools would "be able to grok quite a bit more out of their readers if only LSD were used in and educational facility." John Kerry would finally make this a reality, because he hung out with John Lennon and Jane Fonda, and hasn't forgotten. George Bush's "Leave No Child Behind" legistation has proven an unmittigating faliure. I think John Kerry's "Leave No Child Unhigh" proposal shows unlimited potential.

Well, I've covered four reasons to vote for John Kerry this year. If you're still unconvinced, I can of course recommend to you a couple of books that go into hundreds of reasons to vote for John Kerry tomorrow. Still, well short of the million. But whatever.

But I'm not going to do that. Because you've already made up your mind, and whoever or whatever you're voting for tomorrow, I urge you to do so.

2004-11-01T20:03:00.000-05:00

Damn it, Schilling!

I'm kinda bummed out that Curt Schilling made a "surprise stop" for Bush.

But, y'know, whatever. Curt Schilling is way too cool to be slammed by me or anyone else for this. And if I do see some ribbing over this, let me be first on the front lines to tear their tonsils out. Flipside -I'm sure a lot of the boomer Repubs are quite heartbroken over Bruce Springsteen's endorsement of Kerry. I don't care about that, either, because I for one will always think Springsteen's music sucks a big blue-collar dong.

But I do kinda wish all these guys would just shut up and vote and stop thinking we all actually care about where they stand politically. Regardless...

Curt Schilling, you're a hero in my eyes. Make sure you keep that bloody sock.

2004-10-31T21:22:00.000-05:00

National Novel Writing Month

I'll be participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) starting tomorrow. The idea is to generate 50,000 words of fiction in 30 days, which sounds both excruciating and kinda fun. Anyhoo, I think it's a good way to get my head out of this election and on to other things, as I imagine the rest of November will be a pretty slow month for politics.

If you're interested, here are a few links to catch up:

Blogging Your Novel Part 1
Blogging Your Novel Part 2
Na-No-Blog-Mo
Register Here

My own novel will appear here. I can't promise much coherence in the sequence I put the novel -I just doesn't write that way, and certainly couldn't plot out a novel like that at such a frentic pace.

Also, given the amount of time I'll be spending writing this thing, and the winding down of the Election year, I probably won't be contributing too much here next month. But I'll be posting here right on through the election, so stay tuned.

2004-10-31T16:55:00.000-05:00

Electoral Vote Predictor

I know all of you guys have seen this before, but this is probably going to be the website I visit most frequently from now until the Election, so it should come in handy.

Also, Packers beat the Redskins. For Bush to win this election now, he's going to have to buck not only Convential Wisdom, but also the National Football League.

I wouldn't want to be in the President's shoes right now.

2004-10-30T19:26:00.000-04:00

Bush Wins Florida!

A video from Boom Chicago shows the possible problems with electronic voting machines this year.

2004-10-30T16:35:00.000-04:00

My Final Guesstimate on the Kerry-Bush Tally

Saturday's a slow news day, so I'll go ahead and make my prediction. Kerry wins -51% to Bush's 47%.

As for Battleground States -Kerry carries Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennslyvania, and New Mexico. Bush probably takes Florida, and of course Colorado, Arkansas, and Missouri.

Not a huge deviation for the CW. I actually think it's going to play out pretty much as expected. Actaully, I think Kerry has a better chance taking the leaning Bush battlegrounds than Bush does, as I think GOTV will absolutely be the crucial factor in ecking out the Kerry victory.

This isn't my official endorsement, I just think the election is still Kerry's to lose, and he'd have to try very very hard to lose it with 3 days left to go.

2004-10-30T01:57:00.000-04:00

Here's Hoping the Redskins Lose on Sunday!

It's sports superstition Friday again. According to Countdown on MSNBC, when the Redskins win the Sunday before an election, the Presidential incumbant wins. When the Skins lose, the incumbant loses. This has been the case, according to MSNBC, for the previous 17 elections. Given the Red Sox winning the World Series, I'm going to have to say that 2004 is an off-year for sports analogies, but who knows, maybe this one will hold up again this year.

The Redskins are playing Green Bay on Sunday, so I'd expect the Redskins to lose, anyway. I can't say that's a huge reassurance for me, just a notion. Though I live in DC, I'm a big Eagles fan, who play in the NFC East with the Skins, so I've got a double incentive to root for GB on Sunday. I just won't read too much into it.

2004-10-29T22:46:00.000-04:00

October Surprise? How About This -Stop Being a Bunch of Pussies!

So we got a new Bin Laden Video, and already I've counted on both hands and a number of toes on some of the "liberal" blogs and comments that Kerry should just concede this election and save the emotional turmoil waitng for Election Day. Because we've already lost -it's over, baby, and of course the public is too stupid and emotional about 9/11 still to change horses mid-war.

Or some other stupid shit they use to allow themselves enough rope so they're not completely suicidal should Bush happen to win on November 2nd. But it's a pussy way out, and it shows a stunning lack of commitment from people who have gone through the very same four years that everyone else has, but are willing to now hedge their bets and not invest themselves emotionally in an election that has polled a dead heat for weeks now and is now just four days away.

Finally, the October Surprise, they say. Karl Rove, Bush's Brain and Mastermind Genius, finally fucked us for good this term. We cannot compete with circumstance. John Kerry is super-doomed.

We do this time and time again. When a story comes up in the news, we take the worst possible fucking spin on it, convince ourselves that that's the way it's going to be spun to the public, assume that the public is going to lap it up like dogs, and then are always very plesantly surprised when things don't take that way. Paranoia, anyone?

And I'm really fucking tired of it. Because when you spin the most negative reaction you can imagine, you're already doing and disseminating half of the work for the other side. It becomes bi-partisan. I mean, it's a free country and all, do whatever you want, but I seriously hope your readers get the message and just stop reading your pathetic views.

I've decided not to attack anyone specifically in this space regarding this, mostly due to the fact that a lot of the negativity seems to come from comments, and because a lot of the better blogs out there have already called people on this. But it's still kinda all over the place -I've already heard the meme repeated on TV, but I'm convinced the gestation period started with the blogs.

I'll finish this up with a cliche, unfortunately -this is the most important election I've ever been through, and if some of us are willing to conceed defeat four days before the election because Bin Ladin shows his ugly mug again to criticize the President, than those some of us obviously have too much of a weak stomach for politics and should graciously step out. I know I wax macho about stuff here sometimes, and it's usually meant as a joke, but this time I mean it. You're probably already fed up with the election stuff anyway, and were just waiting for the sign to step out anyway.

I'm going to be spending the weekend writing up my official endorsement for President. I promise it won't be too serious. But this election is -for me, and for so many millions who are fed up and absolutely need a change from the lies, and the absolute horror and disbelief this adminstation has put us through. Watch the Eminem video again. Get your shit together, vote, and don't spin this story for them.

2004-10-28T23:38:00.000-04:00

Help Me Decide on a Costume for Halloween This Year!

Quick, dudes and dudettes! The party's theme is Heaven vs. Hell, or something like that. The biggest thing about this is that you can do the Heaven thing as an angel, or you can do the Hell thing as a devil. Or you can skirt around the theme a bit and go as someone who belongs either in Heaven or in Hell. Right now, I'm debating between a few ideas, with the only criteria being that it be 1.) Super cheap, as I'm on a budget this week, and 2.) Not be too incredibly hard to explain, and 3.) Also be super duper and yes, almost incredibly cheap to produce -we're talking halos made with tin foil and white robes made with discarded bedsheets here, guys.That said, here are my ideas, so far:

1.) An Angel

This is probably the most imaginative of my ideas, so far. Ideally, I could just cut a big hole in my bedsheet and attach a coat hanger to it to affix a tin foil halo to it. Cost: $0. Unfortunately, my bed sheets are yellow, not white, which kinda gives me an even better idea. The Decadent Nicotine-Drenched Smoking Angel. He's basically on the side of good, but he chain smokes and spends his Spring Breaks in Cancun and his clothes stink. Maybe. Girls like to do the devil thing, and it's always been my position that guys that dress like angels in Heaven/Hell themed parties tend to reek of desperation. But so far, this is the cheapest, and almost the most ridiculous option, so I'll keep it in the mix.

2.) Fucking He-Man

I got this idea by thinking about those really cheap theme costumes you used to oogle over in the supermarket when you were a kid. The He-man mask and costume was fucking great. Now He-man went out of style like 20 years ago, but if I could find a costume shop or dollar store that sold this, I'd already be in Heaven. Of course, I wouldn't actually be able to fit into the costume aspect of it, but my idea was this -just wear the mask with normal casual commuter-wear. Of course, I'd accent this a bit. In addition to the He-man mask, I'd buy a super cheap blonde wig, hopefully one that was completely out of synch with the He-man Price Valiant hairstyle. I've always hated the fact that those masks always show the back of your head. Maybe a wig with a ponytail, or a perm. To that, add one of those cheap 2-dollar pirate swords with scabbard that glow in the dark a little bit. Then walk around DC like a normal guy, but every once in awhile (hopefully in a crowd) take out the pirate sword and do the "...by the power of Greyskull!" thing. The kids would freak out. Bonus points for doing it on the Metro. I initially had some problems working He-man into the theme of a Heaven/Hell party, but I figured it out. He-man was a heretic pagan, or course, who didn't believe in Jesus or God ("By the power of -Greyskull..." anyone?) So of course, he's hellbound. Maybe confined only to the first circle of hell, since it's doubtful that a pagan such as He-man was ever baptized, but I digress.

3.) President Bush

Okay, this one was easy. If only I had a blue suit, man, I'd be so set with this. I don't look a thing like G.W., though, so it might take a bit more explaining then I'm willing to do while inebriated, but I do have curly-ish hair like Bush, so it's possible. Get some grey hair dye, put on my unfortunately black suit and tie, and grab a Bush/Cheney button from the local College Republicans office to complete the attire. The fun thing about this is that I can go either way with the Heaven or Hell thing -if I'm talking to a hot but uber-Republican chick, I could be like "Oh yeah, I decided to be George Bush for the party this year because I figured if one guy on this earth is totally going to Heaven, it'd be George ..." Or if some guy is drunk and annoying the fuck out of me, I could play devil's advocate off of either side he opposes. It's certainly the most adaptable costume I've come up with so far.

4.) A Ghost

This is so weak, guys. Yeah, I know. I'm trying to forget I even came up with this one. One sheet, two eye-holes. Guys, I'm poor...but I do like the ascetics of it, in a cheap sort of way. Walking around with a sheet over your body on Halloween just screams: "Yeah, I'm retro, and yet ironic at the same time. This is so cool..." And seriously, guys, who wouldn't get a kick out of a guy with a sheet over his head? With two eyeholes cut out? Nobody, that's who. Anyway, the big question is -do ghosts go to Heaven or to Hell when they pass on? Who knows? What a fucking great ice-breaker! Sheets with a couple of holes cut out of them -a cheap but great ice breaker, where you can debate with your fellow party-goers just exactly where ghosts go in the afterlife.

5.) Cobra Commander

I had some qualms and doubts about going as Cobra Commander. The idea came to me as a kinda spin-off on the He-man idea, and I must say it raised some more practical possibilities for me that the He-man idea could not. For one thing, while I'm sure most of the cool commercial Cobra Commander costumes with the silver face mask are now long out of production, his appearance changed so many times over the decades that I managed to settle on one of them that would be both practical and cheap to emulate. I'm talking, of course, about that version of Cobra Commander where he has a hood with a couple of eyeholes cut out of it for him to see. It'd be hard to find off-hand an article of clothing with the red Cobra logo on it, but I figure I could just pull my old Whitesnake tank out of the closet, and people wouldn't heckle me too much about it. Since Cobra Commander was evil, and such a total failure at being evil, and he whined a lot, I'm sure there's an extra special place for him in Hell, which fits in with the theme of the party very well indeed.

I'm not sold on any of these yet, and definitely open to suggestions. As far as I can tell, they all have their advantages and problems. Any ideas?

2004-10-28T20:47:00.000-04:00

In Case You've Forgotten What's At Stake In This Election

Allow Eminem to remind you. Pretty powerful stuff (thanks Bartcop).

2004-10-27T23:26:00.000-04:00

Absolutely the Only Movie Review You'll Ever See Here at the Apple Coda

Honest. I'm pretty sure you could give a fuck what movies I tend to like in general. And I can say positively that this is the first time I've seen any movie and thought "Hey, I could post my thoughts about this movie on the Internet!"

But I am compelled to do this to Team America -World Police, for a number of reasons:

1.) The movie generated so many positive reviews for a Trey Parker/Matt Stone film. I like South Park, sorta, and I consider Baseketball (which got absolutely horrible abysmal reviews) to be one of the most LOL funny movies I've ever seen. When I screened Baseketball my girlfriend at the time thought I was having a nervous fit or a nervous breakdown. I think she fell asleep midway through the movie.

2.) I wanted to convince myself that the reason why I was disappointed by Team America -World Police wasn't because I was a left-wing nutjob prude who has about as much a sense of humor as some bluenose asshole from Massachusettes. I'm not John Kerry. I swear to God Almighty as a Christian that nothing makes me LOL (wow, I used that twice in one post! LOL! Now Three Times! I'm on a roll!) more than asians fucking up their l's and r's when speaking English. That certainly cannot be in dispute.

The reason why I didn't enjoy Team America is because it's 1.) very politcal, and 2.) already very dated. I mean, seriously...

Holy shit! Screaming big time outside my apartment! Guess the Red Sox broke the Curse, huh! I cannot believe I just missed the last game of the World Series. Fuck! Total sweep!

Anyway. Yeah, there's some funny moments. Actually, you know, I'm a bit distracted right now, so I'll just post this. Make what you want out of Team America -I thought it blew gorillas. The best moment for me was when the Cornhusker guy says "What do you think Spotswood sees in him (Gary)?" And the chick Lisa says "I don't know, but I think I see it too..." And then the Cornhusker guy just stands there for a second with Lisa, and then a very slow close-up as he just turns his head and stares at her for a few more seconds. I have no idea why this is funny, except that it's just fucking creepy.

But the strikes on the left are not very spot-on. LOL -Michael Moore is fat, and he's double-fisting hotdogs! Christ! (although I chuckled when he suicide bombs Mount Rushmore)
Somewhere along the way, the satire loses it's focus as Team America almost become sincere protagonists in the whole thing. And it's been pointed out before -nobody pokes fun at Jerry Bruckheimer quite like Jerry Bruckheimer does (see: Armageddon, and Pearl Harbor)

That said, I'm very proud of my Red Sox.

2004-10-22T01:01:00.000-04:00

ALCS, NLCS, and the End of the Possibility for a World Series/Election 2004 Analogy

I'm certainly not by nature a superstitious person. My world outlook tends to be grounded, unfortunately, in certain practicalities that one would tend to think of as "realism." But the truth is, y'know, sometimes I'd like to be a superstitious person. A place where some kinda karmic force does tend to augment people's good deeds and fuck with them for their bad deeds. Where taking care not to step on a crack in the sidewalk or the street does lead to something like good fortune. Even the bad superstitions -a black cat crosses your path, and you're fucked for the day. That'd be a weird game to play.

Sometimes superstitions do become a sorta weird reality when you're faced with something you cannot handle by yourself. The Washington Sniper thing that happened a couple of years ago, for example. Somehow the news got out that if you walked in a zig-zag pattern on the sidewalks, you'd be a tougher target for the nameless, faceless sniper dude(s) that were out there anywhere and everywhere. Sure enough, I caught any number of people walking down the sidewalks -zig-zagging from the curb side to the side closest to buildings, as if this would make anyone a harder target to hit if they were actually the mark on an open street.

That's a superstition, a solution guided by fear and powerlessness. And I'm sure that guides a lot of the superstitions of the past, present, and future. But Baseball is almost a superstition in itself, if you've been a Red Sox fan all your life, or even just a regular old Joe Baseball Fan. Which is a little weird. Yankees Stadium is The House That Ruth Built, and if you believe in the Yankees, you believe the Babe still walks those bleachers -scowling, spitting, putting a little hex on any stray Sox fans in their ranks. If you believe in the Yankees, there really isn't a grain of salt to take with this. You might blow it off in polite conversation, but secretly, sincerely, you believe. The Red Sox have of course lived under The Curse of the Bambino. That terrible trade of 1920 somehow encouraged the Bambino to take up with some Voodoo priests and wizards to put a halt to any possibility of the Sox winning a World Series, and so far, he hasn't forgotten nor forgiven.

Those are the big ones of Baseball. There's the medium sized ones -the Cubs have taken up the Goat Curse as a faux-serious parable to explain why their team kinda sucks decade after tormented decade. No doubt, when Steve Bartman dies his lonely ghost will join the ranks of the Major League Mythos, doomed to roam the seats of Wrigley Field, weeping openly and in eternal torment for that long gone baseball he snatched out of play. The small but significant ones -the rituals players go through with warming up or corking up their bats, tapping their shoes three times, etc. Baseball is a superstitious game, for better or for worse, mostly due to history and the kinda of the kinda of chance baseball provides to less talented underdog teams that doesn't really exist in any other sport.

And this is, of course, the really cool thing about baseball. The Red Sox, losing the first three, beat the rules of probability and chance and force a game 7, and yeah, we were like -well maybe this could still be the year, but, four games in a row is kinda tough, especially at Yankees Stadium, The House that Ruth Built, and of course the Red Sox blew the game wide open in the first two innings and never looked back.

What can I say.

The greatest ALCS ever. I won't get into the details here, as they've already been discussed at length and entered into the books. Curt Schilling, a man who has time and time again been called a man guided by his superstitions, might have a point about all of that.

The Red Sox go on to face the Cardinals in the World Series on Saturday (and trust me, it's a joy to finally be able to type that out). I guess that puts an end to the Kerry-Red Sox and Bush-Astros analogy. I'll have to miss the first game, as I'm on vacation and will be busy over the weekend, but I look forward to seeing the rest of the series when I get back. And I certainly won't forget to wear my Red Sox hat during the World Series, it seems to have been the decisive factor for the Red Sox so far.

2004-10-13T19:25:00.000-04:00

The Presidential Debate Part 3

Thank God this is the last debate. As much fun as they are to watch and liveblog to, I can't say that I'm going to hear or see anything that I'm not expecting for this one, with the exception of, say, a huge blunder on Kerry or Bush's part. Liveblogging also does tend to cut into the meat of actually hearing the debate, so I cannot promise that I'll be blogging every five or ten minutes like I've done for previous debate posts (I'll actually be spending the time not blogging to catch the Red Sox-Yankees game during the periods where I get bored with the debate, but shhhh!)

Update (7:42 PM): The best strategy I've heard so far for the Kerry camp is -Bush is actually quite adept at digging his own hole by himself, but at some point, the hole recognition factor kicks in, and he does a semi-respectable job at pulling himself out of it. It's a delayed reaction, kicking in after he's already a couple of feet under, but it's there. Kerry's job is to subtley make Bush angry enough that he will forget his own self-consciousness. Tease him, jibe him, whatever. If you can make Bush take it personally, which shouldn't really be too much of a problem, Bush'll keep digging that hole and never look back.

Update (7:57 PM): You know what I was thinking about the other day? Well, I was thinking about how cool it would be to be an electoral college delegate. I mean, I'd be a Democrat of course, so that I would definitely be allowed to serve as a delegate from the District of Columbia. If it were a shoo in for Kerry, I'd probably cast my vote for Bush, just to be the first delegate in the history of DC politics to vote Republican. Wouldn't that be fantastic? "And two delegates from the District go for Kerry, and one goes for Bush! Wow, isn't that weird..." I mean, I'd probably have a lot of explaining to do, but still, I'd be worth it.

Update (8:02 PM): I keep seeing that commerical for What Makes George Tick.com on MSNBC. It's very well done for a political ad, but still, I think the poll is a little one-sided. What about if you think he does care about you, for instance? I mean, what are you susposed to click on if you, just as an example, think that Bush really does care about your feelings? I'm so fucking confused...

Update (8:24 PM): Bush will of course be expected to accent every criticism of John Kerry with the word "Liberal." Amoung the evidence will be the ranking of Kerry as the #1 most liberal senator last year in the National Journal. Of course, a balancing point is that as far as his career against other current senators goes, he ranks #11. Edwards ranks #27, which barely places him in the conservative wing of his own part (Edwards finished #4 last year). Of course, NJ based it only on 19 "critical" votes for Kerry (not sure how many Edwards). Not that ranking congressmen by political ideology based on "critical" votes isn't completely stupid in making a judgement whether to vote for them or not, but I think as far as Kerry's senate record goes, it reflects what he has portrayed himself as during the campaign -a middle of the road somewhat moderate Democrat with liberal leaning on a few issues. He's certainly not a liberal activist, and to portray him as such is simply retarded.

Update(8:46 PM): Fuck, New York is up on Boston 1-0! Given that Boston lost Game 1 of the ACLS, da Sox totally gotta get their eye on the ball! Oh, yeah, the debate...still hasn't started yet, although Tommy B and Rusty T both give props to the fact that we in the media totally shouldn't call a winnar in this debate until The America People have decided. Well, yeah, that could happen. After the debate, Chris Matthews and Co. could talk about baseball, and how since the Astros (Texas, Bush's "home" state) and the Red Sox (Boston -for Kerry) are still both playing, that the election really hasn't been decided yet. The question is, if Boston beats the Yankees, will that mean that Kerry is doomed to lose New York this year? I still don't know, it might be one of those intangibles, a metaphysical karma out there, that truly influences this election, but I'm sure we can debate that a'plenty when the election's finally over and we can start the recounts.

Update (9:08 PM): And the first question on domestic politcy from moderator Bob Schieffer is -"Can America ever be safe from terrorists?" Or something like that. That was the gist, anyway. Boo.

Update (9:19 PM): I smell blood in the water and it seems like it's coming from Bush. While Kerry's chuckling is sorta condescending, and Bush did beat Kerry up on the first question, and maybe the second, on the fiscal discipline problem, Bush is simply unable to defend against Kerry's attacks. And Kerry compares Bush to Tony Soprano, which is kinda cool when you think about it. The Cabal for Fiscal Irresponsibility!

Update (9:40 PM): Bush looks incredulous at almost everything Kerry says, no matter how pedestrian. Kerry has the smirk going on big time. Thank you split screens! But the greatest thing about this debate is that every time he finishes answering his question, he gets this grim and wink thing going on like -"Hey man, I answered a question, and that was pretty cool! I looked great!" I keep expecting him to give a thumbs up with that wink. Oh well, maybe he'll do it on the next question.

Update (9:50 PM): Bush is, honestly, starting to dominate this debate. I'm really starting to hate this split screen thing, because I think it's starting to take the focus off the issues and plans the candidate is speaking about and instead lends focus on whatever reaction shots the other candidate is making. That's part of the reason why the focus is leaning towards Bush, because I think the reason why Kerry wins debates in general is because he's better in an issue orientated debate. I think the other candidate, when he's not actually speaking, is a distracting presence, and I wish that MSNBC would at least cut to a full shot of the candidate speaking from time to time.

Update (10:04 PM): Biggest lie so far -no litmus test for Bush on Roe v. Wade. The fact that Bush wants to stock the courts with pro-life justices is pretty much accepted by everyone. Yet he equivocates on that. Bush is clearly unnerved enough about the swing voters to actually attempt to court them in this debate, which kinda opposes the pre-debate conventional wisdom. So far, I can count on less than one hand the times Bush has delievered the butter to his conservative base. Is it a change in stategy, something else, or fear?

Update (10:21 PM): Bush wants the atheist vote? Wow, now I'm completely confused. But his reasoning behind the segue from respect to the non-religious to citing his government faith initiaives is weird -"I want to court the non-religious in our country by introducing faith-based initiatives into our government!" What?

Update (10:34 PM): Closing arguments. But first, that last question -Kerry nailed that one. Very good. I hate to go with the CW, but damn, Kerry is really fucking presidential. He's done a complete 180 since the days when he's was just kinda sticking his foot in the water into Presidential politics. An incredible debate, and I have to say, and I have to say again (not again! Gooder! -10 pts. if you can guess the reference), that, while it was closer I think than the last two, Kerry really put out a stellar performance (the best, by far, so far), whilst Bush put out only an okay one. The split-screen thing I mentioned before, though, has already been mentioned on MSNBC in the post-debate analysis, so I think that is a mitigating factor in favor of Bush. Windy! A bit more in a few after I catch up on the Red Sox.

Update (10:50 PM): Well, I caught the 7th inning in the Red Sox vs. Yankees debate, and -quite frankly, it aint pretty. The Red Sox are down 0-3, but how does that figure in exactly into the last, the actual final Presidential debate this term? Well, I'm not sure exactly. I'll follow up on my previous post and say that I think Kerry put in his best performance so far, but I'll leave that open to debate over the next couple of days. And the reason, essentially, for this is that Bush wasn't a punch doll in this debate. I think the thing is this, though -if you think Bush is vastly inferior to Kerry in substance and style in debating, then you probably thought that Bush won, simply because he beat the expectations game. But if you look at them as two presidential candidates on equal standing before this debate, then I think you have to say that Kerry did seem the more Presidential. There certainly wasn't a knock-out punch. I guess that's to Bush's credit that he didn't leave his campaign open enough for one. Oh, well -here's a very politcal bear for ya to think about. Over, and out.

2004-10-08T20:32:00.000-04:00

More of the Same -Presidential Debate Vol. 2

I'm not exactly crazy about giving up my Friday night for this, but I do it for you, good readers, so that you may bask in my enlightened glow. Bask, and enjoy it, because this is the next to last one (not counting my liveblogging election night coverage).

This debate's format might be a boon for Bush, because I think he feels more confident when he's in a crowd and can size up his audience. Despite Kerry's reputation as aloof and bloodless, I think he does well in this format as well. With that said, I don't think Bush has the advantage here. He just has a bit more of a better format that might make him seem almost completely incompetent, rather than completely.

Just caught an old clip of Mondale vs. Reagan during their debates. Mondale, throwing it right back in Reagan's face: "there you go again..." Is it just me, or was Walter Mondale the most inconceivably improbable Presidential candidate of all time? "Well, our incumbant lost to Reagan in 1980, so I'll guess we'll just have to run...The Former Incumbant's Vice President!"

I don't know...but maybe I'll get the notion tonight. Stick yo ass right here to find out.

Update (8:54 PM): Wow I guess we are a polarized nation. While Chris Matthews was talking, in the background a Bush/Cheney sign and a Kerry/Edwards sign were competing for face time. You know what would be awesome, instead of just stuff like that, a little fisticuff action amoungst the bipartisan crowd assembled around him. Then, after a bit, they get tired, and stop when they see Chris Matthews and his team of experts trying "to make sense out of all of this polarization in the electorate." And then the sudden realization -that maybe a lot of this "polarization" comes from the news itself...and then, my friends, it's open season on instant pundits. I've got my door barricaded already.

Update (9:03 PM): what is the sound of one set of hands clapping. Tune in to MSNBC to find out. Move the sound mike, goddammit!

Update(9:12 PM): "I wasn't happy when we found out he'd hadn't any weapons." (I'm not sure if that's the exact quote, but it's pretty close). I guess it's a poor choice of words, but still...What? I mean, I guess it makes sense if he wasn't happy about damage to his credibliity, but the fact that Sadaam or the insurrgents were not going to use WMDs against our troops in Iraq would make me pretty happy. Weird.

Update (9:21 PM): Bush: "I will win this debate if I make sure to accent every single word that comes out of my mouth. It's sounds forceful. :)"

Update (9:29 PM): Kerry has made only one mistake so far. In the question about Iran specifically, the question was -what are you going to do right now. Kerry kinda turned it into what he would have done if he, instead of Bush, had been President the last 4 years. It's a difficult question -I honestly have no idea what should be do with hostile countries with nuclear arms. But it would've been nice if Kerry could give at least a semblence of an answer on that one besides sanctions (which are kinda already there) and inspections.

Update (9:35 PM): But, then again, Kerry is totally toasting Bush. I honestly thought Bush was going to fuck Charles Gibson up on that last question when he wanted to respond. Holy shit, that was funny, in a tragic sort of way. Bush is starting to go antsy -remember what your guys told you, Bush, be patient, look interested in the debate.

Update (9:50 PM): Bush: "Kerry's a liberal" Uh-oh, I hope you got a bigger can to contain that one, George. I'm a little worried about Kerry's spending proposals, too, given the horrible deficit, but Kerry knows his place in the scheme of his things, and he knows that he has to be uber-practical with the nation's money to keep us afloat. That said, Kerry has fielded the domestic spending questions well, and Bush, well, he's on ineffectual rabid attack mode big time.

Update (9:56 PM): "Look at the camera, John Kerry, and no new taxes for people makeing less that $200,000" What a fucking hokey, and Kerry had trouble at first figureing out which camera to look at. Hah! I love debates!

Update (10:10 PM): No surprise, Bush got totally fucking crushed on the environment. Bush is at least more articulate and stands up straight for this debate. But Kerry is seriously destroying him. I'm way more impressed with Kerry this time around.

Update (10:33 PM): Really quick before closing arguments, I think alot of the questions, abortion, stem cells, etc., are really polar and you'll think whoever agrees with you on the subject won the points. Kerry did give some really astute ideas about nuance, showing he does have a brain.

Update (10:40 PM): Well, what can I say. The closing arguments were stump speeches, but this was a fantastic debate. Really, I kid you not. You know this too if you're watching the debates. "Too early to call." I can't say that's true. Kerry trounced Bush on this. There will be more Bush spin this time, but there's no doubt in my mind. While Bush still feels kid-like, Kerry just keeps looking better and better. I am humbled. Honestly. And that's all for tonight. Nap time for me, folks.

2004-10-06T23:51:00.000-04:00

It's All Horseshit -My Post Analysis of the VP Debate, and other "Stumpy" Thoughts

In my last post, my instant reaction was that as far as Edwards vs. Cheney going mono a mono in a deathmatch to decide who'd be the next President was concerned, I believed Cheney won by a hair. I stick by that, but as far as 1.) the importance of the debate is concerned, and 2.) the real heavy prognosis as to if this really matters or will influence this election, I come to a couple of pretty solid conclusions.

1.) As a factor in influencing an election, this debate had to be absolutely and completely useless.

2.) If Kerry has serious momentum coming out of the debate last week, while acknowledging a slight win for Cheney, I cannot lend creedance for even a brief hair of a second that this debate put a damper on that. If this turns out to be the case, and I won't believe it to be the case unless a poll comes out tomorrow showing Bush/Cheney 30 points ahead, and even then I won't believe it because the polls are going crazy and inconsistant on their samples of Democrats and Republicans, so screw it. Anyway, if somehow they manage to convince me that the "momentum" has, in fact, dampened, I'll gladly hang up my fedora hat and leave the realm of speculative political blogging forever.

3.) Because I'm a gangster, and even gangsters know when to lay low when the deal is done and the chips are down.

But, y'know what, damn it feels good to be a gangster, so I'll stay in. Never fold, son. That's what they always said to me, even when as a young man they convinced me to double up my initial bet on the Patriots during the half-time on Super Bowl XX. And even though just the idea of beating the spread was already physically impossible, I went ahead and doubled my bet. And I lost. Big time. And though they cut my hands off for not paying them the 25 thousand dollars I owed them -in a way, as I type these words out with the stumps of my almost useless wrists , still, the laws of probability guarentee that given 50-50 odds, I will eventually pick a winner here. Because I'm a gangsta, and I never fold...

My hand shows that while Cheney won the initial debate, many of his most powerful points were awfully disingenuous. I wont go there and call them lies, because I'm afraid. Of the Lidless Eye that never blinks -and the fact that even John Ashcroft already knows where I live.

I'm going to stop right here. I figure that Kerry wins the rest of the debates, which surely isn't a gamble, but also -I'm going to guess that there will be a "decisive Reagan" moment for Kerry that pundits and newcasters will come away with in Presidential Debate reviews and say -"this is the moment where it was all over for George Bush."

The strange thing, in super future-o-vision, and from my perspective, is that even a crushing in the debates just might not be enough. And when I say that, I mean you should take that as a bit of a joke.

2004-10-05T20:01:00.000-04:00

Vice Presidential Debate: a Live-Blogger's Account

I'm starting a bit late tonight, partly because I just got finished watching Kill Bill Vol. 2, and also because I'm starting to lose the interest in the pre-spin that goes on in these things, particularly on Hardball. One thing the Election Committee might think of is moving these debates earlier in the election year, just so the pressure's off a bit, and they can still get their points across.

Anyway, I ruminated a bit on VP Debates in my previous post, as before, I'll Update when given the notion.

Cheers!

Update (8:25 PM): Switched over to FoxNews for a minute. Holy cow pre-debate stuff is boring. Anyway, the reason why this page takes too long to load is because of a unresolved problem with Blogrolling. That shit takes forever, I know, but I probably won't get around to tweaking it until this weekend. Kudos to you, though, good reader for being patient and allowing the page to load. Really, you guys are fantastic. Super, in fact. Keep it up, because there's more to come.

Update (9:10 PM): Edwards kinda skids out a bit to begin with on his response to Cheney's question. It's the predicate of Iraq to Cheney's subject, and thus Edwards ignores the subject. Was Iraq a threat. But it does serve Edwards in a way in that it leads it into the Democrats main turf and the problems with the war in Iraq and calls on Cheney to defend himself. Not too bad.

Update (9:15 PM): What the hell are they writing? Maybe it's just the debate layout (sitting down at a big desk), but it seems weird. Scribble, scribble. Is this a debate, or an 60 minute written test?

Update (9:19 PM): Edwards totally passes the "global test." Trust, understanding. "They need to know that the credibility of the United States is always good." Fantastic.

Update (9:29 PM): Edwards is going a bit on the defensive now. But sometimes the best offense is a good defense. Or something. He's got to hit harder now, because, while Cheney's holding his own here, I certainly haven't seen a real punch on his side yet. Unless he "wolfs out" tonight. Then, my friend, all bets are off.

Update (9:44 PM): Edwards is getting a bit flustered, stammering a bit. And Cheney debates the moderator a bit, "It's take longer 30 seconds," "Well that's all you got." It's a question of confidence, and Edwards needs to get back on track a bit and just reassume for himself that Cheney is a pushover. He is a good speaker naturally, he just seems, for some reason, to be intimidated by him. And well he should, damn it, because who knows what evil wells in that foul demon.

Update (9:49 PM): Domestic issues, yay! Foreign policy is of course Cheney's game. Edwards has apparently not shown that he can quite go toe to toe with Cheney quite like Kerry can with Bush. Edwards definitely is Edwards' game, and he should be stellar. If Edwards isn't, consider Cheney da winnar.

Update (10:08 PM): I've gotta say, as a card-carrying liberal, that Cheney is holding his own here. Given most of the last 20 minutes has been a debate on gay marriage, an issue which has a sort of soft spot for Cheney's otherwise severe conservative politics. He almost comes off more compassionate in this case than Edwards, who kept brow-beating the "just in case you guys know, I'll repeat it for the third time, marriage is the union between a man and a woman." He scores points when he states that legally no state ever has to recognize a marriage legalized in another state.

Update (10:15 PM): The AIDS funding is one thing which surprised me during the Bush administration, and I credit them for doing what they've done to fund an AIDS program abroad and raise awarness for it in the States as a critical issue. I'm glad that Edwards wants to give it more funding, but other than that, this is one of those things that is just not controversial.

Update (10:27 PM): The problem with John Edwards is that tonight he is presenting himself as a follower, and not that it's a problem because in the sense he's supporting and encouraging Kerry's leadership ability by doing this, but he's also allowed Dick Cheney to control the debate. In my eyes, Cheney appears almost ironically sympathetic in debate mode. When asked who he is, he goes into a brief biography and puts himself into Edwards' shoes. This is exactly what happened with Lieberman. Cheney's main goal has been to take Edwards out of attack dog mode, and he has succeeded.

Update (10:43 PM): This wasn't really an issue orientated debate. A lot of the questions were really open-ended, and it seems like Edwards really couldn't figure in where to stick in his big talking points, which he surely was planning on doing a lot during this debate. Cheney, on the other hand, is quite confortable with open ended questions. No problem with that, obviously Cheney is a very good debater and a smart guy. If it weren't for the past four years, I'd call him respectable. Well, it's all on Kerry's shoulders now. I'd like to point out that, there's nothing Edwards did that makes him being 2nd in line for the Presidency out of the question. Really, Edwards debated fairly well, and there's no reason to figure he'd be out of his league. Cheney wins, but it's not a huge win, and I think really it just whetts our appetite for Friday Night.

2004-10-04T22:16:00.000-04:00

Just a Whole Hell of a Bunch of Random Thoughts

Not to knock blogging too much, I mean, y'know, that's like what I do! But still, if this doesn't capture what political blogging during a Presidential Election is like, I don't know what else does.

You know you're close to wrapping up an election year when both sides start debating stuff like this. That's all I have to say about it, I'm just going to link, and not comment on the specifics because I certainly don't really want to contribute to this debate (although at this point, even LGF has laid down the gauntlet, so I can't imagine it blowing up on the news). I'm not a huge Drudge reader, honestly. I probably glance at his front page five or six times a year, and although I know a ton of people think he's a partisan hack, I never really quite got that impression until this week, and I've got to say that "partisan hack" is just too tidy a phrase for his presidential election coverage. He's whacked.

Anyway, check out this neat Hollies site. It offers their first six albums to listen to, while you're surfing or writing or whatever. Well, I'm a huge early Hollies fan, so that's good for me at least.

I'll be live blogging again for the vice presidential debates. Out of all the debates during the election years of the past, I like the Vice Presidential ones. I missed the Lieberman/Cheney one in 2000, but from what I've heard, it was an anomaly. Al Gore, despite the wrap he got against Bush in the 2000 Presidential debates, mopped the floor with Dan Quayle in 1992. By and large, the craziest debate I've ever seen -and I still vaguely remember it. It was mean. Mean is good in politics -while for the most part it does pay to pull some punches in Presidential Debates, I get the feeling that most die-hard Vice Presidential Debate fans expect a bloodbath. I'm a Vice Presidential Debate fan.

Still, Cheney's got me worried. He's kind of a smile while stabing you in the back kinda persona, which is what doomed Lieberman in 2000. Lieberman didn't even know what hit him. Edwards, of course, isn't going to fall for trap, but he's got to learn how to parry. The no holds barred shit kicking up in your face fighting stance that Edwards prefers is something that Cheney has learned to parry easily himself with his air of conversational overtures during his interviews and that infuriating "Who, me?" stance that never lets up. Keep your chin up, John, give him some quick jabs with a smile on your face when his guard is down, and maybe keep some tranquilizer darts in your breast pocket just in case your adversary does decide to "wolf out" on you and attempts to rip your throat out live on television. You know, just to be safe -be prepared.

You never know.