A new class...

requires me to write things quite frequently. It's Creative Nonfiction, something with which I should be intimately familiar. Unfortunately I've not felt very, well, orignial as of late. I'm sure that my observations and interpretations of current and past events is in some way unique, set apart from all the rest of the rantings and the ravings of the press-slash-blogsphere. Even the topic on which I will do much of my writing this semester, Religion in America and/or American Politics, has recieved much coverage thanks to Dubya's supposed ability to harness the Fundamentalists as a viable voting bloc, a theoretical counter to the Crazy Commie Lefties who would ban all guns and make dope legal and use Bibles to fuel the melting machines of the recycling plants.

Perhaps there are a few more words in there than I thought. At any rate, things should get interesting when I have to infiltrate some religious organisation and write up its nefarious operations. Having the experience that I do in this area should also provide some grist for the word-mills, as it were, although being predisposed to certain positions (i.e. right-wing religious nutters aren't rational and cling like children to made-up stories about a benevolent invisible Superman named "God" who will reward them for eliminating individuality in His name, but only once they die) is supposed to be bad for honest reporting. So, to what degree are we supposed to be "creative"? Sounds like a good question to ask the instructor, no?

This might be illegal or something...

but this must be preserved / exposed. An icy hand from the past, risen once again to remind us that nothing, really, changes in this country. It might be past the Statute anyways, I dunno, it's from a past edition of the Onion. Let's just see if anyone finds it.

---

To Hell with Journalistic Objectivity, Vote for George Bush, Dammit!
Onion Election Watch
by Victor Runbeck
Onion Campaign Reporter

I've been a political reporter for The Onion longer than most of its readers have been alive, and never have I compromised my duty as a journalist to further my own agenda. Until now. I simply cannot stand by any longer without voicing my fervent support for the sitting president of these United States, George Bush. Furthermore, I feel safe in assuming the majority of Americans - indeed Onion readers - agree with me.

Lend me your political scruples and let's take a look at George Bush, quite possibly the most qualifie person to lead this country who ever lived.

George Bush is a President who'll keep American women obliged to our proud Puritanical past. (Hey, I don't plan on having an abortion this year!) Now girls, no matter how you stack your blocks, having children is what you do best. Who would take care of the kids if you decided to try your hand at being a corporate attourney? Your husband? Ladies, there's not a sane man alive who would allow that to happen. A vote for George Bush is a vote for Leave It To Beaver's June Cleaver. You wouldn't see Mrs. Cleaver trotting downtown to her obstetrician for an abortion and she certainly wouldn't be pulling in bigger paychecks than Ward.

We need a President who values individual rights - as long as they ain't gay rights! OK, you're gay. Fine. Great. Sorry. You should have thought about that before you signed up for the U.S. military. Sexually harassing women isn't exactly what we teach our boys-in-uniform, but at least it's better than sending love notes across enemy trenches to the other side. And that's precisely the sort of thing gays do. Fellow Americans, this is a call to arms - a rally to reelect our President and to assure that our military is rife with brawny, masculine, thick-necked, hairy-chested, back-slapping heterosexual men.

If ever there was apolitical party that had an affinity with God allmighty, it would be the Republican party. As a matter of fact, looking out of my study right now I see Jesus Christ sitting on a cloud smiling down upon the GOP. (He's wearing a little elephant lapel on his tunic.) Seperation of Church and State is a fine idea, but when we can't make our teachers lead classroom prayer, we're no better than the Communists! A vote for George Bush is a vote for every little boy who folds his hand for the first time to murmur The Lord's prayer. Pick up your cross and vote my friends!

George Bush and the Republican Party represent everything that is right and just in the aggregate American mind. We Republicans know who we are. The Waltons, Harry S. Truman, and yes, even the blond-haired Jesus Christ is at home in our party. When our ideals no longer offer the reassurance they once did, the American people will look to the future. It's happened before. Social Security and Civil Rights were the product of a society that oculd no longer hold off change. The 21st century will produce new problems demanding new change, but I ask you, has that time come? Hell no! Hang on to the last century with all your might and vote George Bush in '92!

---

Scary, no? Put a W between the George and Bush in that story, and replace the lond mention of Commies with the word Terrorists, and blammo, that damned History thing, like a busted-ass record, repeats itself.

"Back in the burgh..."

says a friend's IM away window, and the same applies to me. When I arrived it was raining and hovering around 55 degrees, which according to the weather predictor will be the norm for the rest of the week and beyond. The occurences of brain-killing holy-fuck-it's-cold temperatures have been few, and concentrated in the period when I was enjoying sun in California. BTW, the two trends emerging from the Governator's Domain are large, internally lit inflatable lawn figures, and big-screen HD televisions. EVERYONE has or will soon aquire one, so hop on the wagon and be the first on yr. block!

Navigability Q. Anthropoid sent me an email the other day regarding some lasses who had recently lost their innocence. That's probably the neatest automatically generated spam name I've heard. I should use that as a spoof address...

Hells Bells,

over 100 pageviews? Of course, half of them are me checking the site for the status of the updates, but still... kinda neat.

I feel dirty now that I've been denied access to two very different websites by this joke of a service provider - I'm talking to you Unwired Access. For some reason, it is possible to view Penny Arcade but not Mac Hall, and anyone even vaguely familiar with these two comics should understand the irony. Poor programming job, boyos - even my site has enough cussing on it to set the filters alight. Ah well.

Let me put it this way - I called the family in pittsburgh from the home of my family in southern California on christmas day. I was told it was about 10 goddamn degrees in the 'burgh, and I sympathised. Then I put my shorts on and went to play some golf with Dad-O. We went to San Diego on Monday to see U.S.S. Midway, and the weather was so perfect that I was reminded of a dream.

Also, despite the size of the open blue sky and the concentration of highly religious crazies, there is another crucial difference between my two hometowns. In Colorado Springs you can actually drink the tap water without the distinct feeling that some measure of your USRDA of essential minerals is being filled at the same time. This simple fact can have a profound influence on one's feeling of overall health.

Is this wretched excuse...

for a year over with yet? Goddammit, 2004 will be remembered forever as the Year of the Foul Swine-Herd. History's pronouncement is in, folks, and there seems to be little doubt that after a few centuries of measurable progress towards a brighter future for all humanity, the scales finally tipped the other way this year, and we are now going backwards.

We're going fucking backwards. I know I just used that line, but I'll use it again Goddammit because that's the plain truth. Only the Greed Heads and Professional Pimps are doing better today than they were four years ago, and only fools and monsters think that our human world is a kinder and more enlightened place now that the Shrub has been allowed to wage his wars. FEAR and TERROR have such a grip on the hearts of the Swine in this nation that only an ocean of revenge-blood will break them. And you know what that means - we're TOO LATE.

FUCK I'm in a foul mood. The first minute of the first hour of January 1st 2005 will not be different in any way from the minute that preceeded it, and the weeks and months that follow it may not bring relief. Now would be a good time to invest in some liqour holdings, because the only guerantee I am willing to make is that people will continue to drink. I know this because I will be one of them. So long, suckers, I'm going to live in an altogether more tolerant land. It's called Future Land, and the bretheren of my generation have finally gotten into a few top positions and are already beginning to undo the massive damage this brain-dead batch of luddites is wreaking. See you there if we both survive.

Well, I tried this once...

already, but apparently Safari is designed to shut down after a certain amount of self-serving bullshit whining rantage. I thought it was pretty good, but I'm a notoriously poor judge of the quality of my own writing.

For some reason, the other night an episode of "Wife Swap" caught my attention, and it illustrated for me a point that I don't think a lot of people really consider day-to-day. This episode concerned the swapping of a Texas rock and roll semi-goth mom and a South Carolina baptist woman's-place-is-the-kitchen mom. It confirmed, almost too perfectly, every nasty suspicion and feeling I had about these fundamentalist religious fuck-nut cases, particularly the bits featuring the baptist husband. His mind wasn't just small, it shrank as you watched him. He was so perfectly prejudiced, so delightfully ignorant, so horrifically terrrifyingly mind-killingly stupid that I began to question my own grip on reality. Objectively I know that these people exist in large numbers - they're the "core" of Red State Fucks that did what they always do on November 2nd in an election year and voted for the dumbest beady-eyed Fuck on the ballot. I have even lived among them in Colorado Springs, that smoky hamlet at the foot of the Castle von Dobson, Focus on the Family.

But this was too easy. The man (Bill, I think, Mr. Bill Fucknut) presented such a clear target for lampooning that even the Iraqi National Guard could have taken him out, were they equipped with sarcasm instead of second-hand U.S. small arms (and here, the obvious joke would be "maybe they'd be better off with sarcasm," and that's just as cheap a shot. But come on, you were thinking it. Knock-Knock Joke Mortars and Funny Rhyming Humvees and Trenchant Wit Grenades and oh okay). And at some point towards the end I began to notice that the extraordinary level of editing - that is, splicing together short clips that may or may not be in correct chronological order - couldn't be due solely to time constraints. The staccato nature of the sound bites in particular bothered me, because it clearly destroyed the natural rythm of the conversations that were "taking place" on camera. Whole sentences would end and begin at unnatural times, sometimes a syllable or two shorter than they should have been.

But everything we see on television is edited this way, to one degree or another. That's why they call them shows. If it's on television at all it is by definition entertainment, and entertainment does not have to be real. In fact, it's generally better if it isn't. But these quote-unquote arguments that happen on Reality Television Shows never ever ever happen exactly the way we're made to think they do, and anyone who thinks they do needs to move a few feet back from the screen and check their pulse. Everything you see on that screen, Everything, Every Fucking Thing, is Edited to appear that way. All of it. From news interviews to America's Most Painful Pratfalls, nothing is real inside there, nothing, and the degree to which we Fat Americans depend on it and accept what it says unquestioningly is really, really fucking scary. I am both fascinated and terrified by the prospect of witnessing the next fifty years of our specie's development, because now I have a genuine fear that we'll start going fucking backwards.

What do you think, too much? So far Camino has behaved well, but it set my processor activiy monitor aflame with activity, and something called the "TrueBlue Environment". WTF? Why isn't it all just one fucking thing, one application one process, give me a break.

I suppose it's true...

that I'm one of the most vanishing of minorities, especially in God's America. That's right, no one in particular, I'm an Atheist. Been out of the closet for a while now, yessiree. Haven't been hit by lightning or run over by a Jesus Fish Magnet delivery truck as of yet, but it's definitely odd knowing that something like 98.6% of the other humans I see walking around me believe in an invisible super hero that lives in space and punishes people for wrongdoing after they're dead.

BTW, here's the credit for that description. GYWO is superb satire, because it isn't satire, really, it's just raw disgust channeled through some cheap red clip art and fantastic dialogue. And my contacts ache, so that's all for tonight. Future Self, if you're reading this, I get the feeling that a humongous rant is building in that dark, dark heart of yours, so here's hoping it gets out soonish.

Yay! It's there...

on page 624 of the gallery, I think. Yeah, that's it. One of the only pictures of me to ever make it onto the Inter-Web, my PowerBook Pallas has a message for the rest of the world.

I like it.

Good reading...

comes from odd sources. Consider this document, which has been handed down to us from our dear James Madison, one of the Founding Brothers. One passage in particular stood out to my eyes:

"Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate [liberty] needs them not. Such a Government will be best supported by protecting every Citizen in the enjoyment of his Religion with the same equal hand which protects his person and his property; by neither invading the equal rights of any Sect, nor suffering any Sect to invade those of another."

Such profound wisdom may be plumbed from the depths of our history with disconcerting ease. What modern politico could hope to match such eloquence, and what chance would a cadre of such people have to effect change in our hyper-polarised political world? Makes me whistful for a time I was never a part of.

Lines like this are why I love...

Teen Titans.



"Bumble Bee! Release the Mind Control Squid!"

Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HAAA!! Seriously, that show's got it where it counts.

To take arms against...

a sea of ignorance, and by opposing, end it? That seems to be the Question of the Week, whether 'tis nobler in the heart to suffer the taunts and jabberings of a slate of morons in order that their voices might be countered. But for the majority of my time as a registered Democrat, I've not been excited or energised by the party and it's machinery - rather, I've taken solace in running counter to a party of fear, superstition, and naked ignorance. Against such a tremendous front of Red on our map of America, is it really possible to fight against the Elephant without by default aligning with the other side? I was prepared to wear the ribbons and devices of our nation's armed forces in order to fight for America, but the new militancy taking hold among the Opposition would pit me against America. How is this behaviour any better than the "enemy"s?

I know, an Obviousman standard! I'll fight ignorance on both sides.

Well, that felt good...

but solved nothing, as always. Plus, now that the spleen has been vented and the balance of precious bodily fluids restored there are a few things that have become clear. John Kerry might have run a poor campaign, but he also faced the most rutheless, well-funded and hyper-disciplined political machine ever created in America. JFK walked up to the firing line with a revolver and watched as a tank battalion rolled over the hills towards him, and the fact that he came so close to winning despite the odds and the forces arrayed against him is a testament to the power of decency and real courage in politics. These ideals are oft overlooked because no one wants a Smith & Wesson when you could be driving an M1-A1 Abrams, and here I could delve into the similarities between the candidate's philosophies and their chosen weapons ad nauseum. Suffice it to say, if you bother to ruminate upon the contrasts offered, the illustration is simple and clear.

That is all for now. I wished to leave something in the great un-read blogsphere that was less vituperative than my last post. In the weeks and months to follow the forces of decency shall regroup and forge ahead, and we will prepare however we must to make sure that 50% of America is not squashed into the treads of the enemies' armour.

Congratulations! And Welcome...

To Four More Years of Bombs and Poverty! This race was John Kerry's to win or lose, and he lost it, folks. He did not have the Fire in his belly, or the ability to connect with the American population on more than an intellectual level. Reality has never had anything to do with who was going to win, so in a way the whole Bush line that "we make our own reality" has plainly become the truth. People don't actually know who will make a better leader until that person's leadership is tested, but people obviously believe that Dubya is the stronger man. John Kerry could not make himself look strong, not to save himself or the Republic.

Obviously a bare majority of Americans really are that terrified of Terrorists and Fags and Abortions. Obviously it is not necessary to appeal to Hope when an appeal to Fear is so much easier to understand and so much more effective. Make no mistake: Bush lives on, runs on, and governs by Fear. The Alternative, we are told by the ads and Dick Cheney, is a pack of wolves that will eat your children and steal away your bibles and turn those left alive into Queers, and so the man who can save you from those wolves will be your saviour no matter how ghoulish his true agenda.

We The People have given George W. Bush a brand new rubber-stamped permission slip to continue on his Riteous Course, and anyone who buys the line from Sen. Frist that they will govern more moderately this time around should have their ears plugged with molten lead, because they're obviously not using them. We have told the world to Fuck Off and Get Out Of Our Way. We have the tanks, friends, and we'll decide where to park them, thank you and good night. Anyone who thinks that Iraq will be fixed before the next Islamic china shop is torn apart has learned nothing and has no sense of history, and anyone who expects the rest of the world to do more than wring it's hands together and pass a few resolutions has learned even less. Nothing short of massive economic and diplomatic retaliation will ever convince Americans that it is a poor idea to have a bald-faced jack-ass in office that bitch slaps foreign leaders into doing things the American way. And nothing will ever convince Dubya that he was wrong in the first place. America is Too Big, Too Great, and Too Powerful to ever be swayed by the pygmy voices of other nations, and that will never change so long as our taxes go to Halliburton in order to fix the things that our fine Army breaks.

I am strangely at peace with this result. It is clear, now more than ever, that America is truly ruled by fear. In 2000 it was Bush who accused Al Gore of trying to "scare people into the voting booth." That ranks as one of his most subtle yet important hypocrisies. "Why Take The Risk?" shouts another Bush ad that ran every thirty seconds in the week before the election, apparently referring to the risk that John Kerry will personally take all the money from the CIA's bank account and give it to AIDS patients and homeless unwed mothers. Or start non-stop shuttle service from Kabul to Cleveland with special discounts for guys named Mohammed. Or use the National Guard to take over all church basements and turn them into no-questions-asked 24 hour abortion clinics.

Don't laugh. People are afraid of this, which is why 11 states just made gay marriage illegal. The specter of a Homosexual A-Team driving around in a van and breaking into your house at dinner time to turn your innocent little boy into a Lover of Men is real to these people, on some dark fundamental level, because a piece of paper that says two humans are married cannot possibly justify that sort of reaction. Americans are deathly afraid of Terrorists and Gays and Non-Christians, but they are not afraid of Tomahawk missiles or Stryker APCs or F-15 Strike Eagles. Those are the weapons of God and Justice, and to date they have killed or allowed the death of over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Iraqi families are afraid of those weapons, but their deaths are totally justified by the two buildings that fell down on September the 11th of 2001. The tens of thousands of children's bodies that lie mangled in the streets of Baghdad are just a part of that "group of folks" that "hate freedom." Killing them is necessary, ladies and gentlemen, until as Mr. Rumsfeld said they become "tired of killing themselves."

Congratulations America. Your fear will rule the world and the future of our children for the next seven generations. God Bless.

Attending a mini-rally with Reverend...

Jesse Jackson was good for the soul, even if I'm not traditionally moved by populist emotional appeals. People chanting in a crowd, no matter the message, always creeps me out. But this was helpful because after all the reading I've done, and all the polling that's taken place and been ignored, and all the reporting that has been spewed out of that God Damned Television, I really do feel that Kerry will win. If the "likely voter" polls now show an absolute dead even tie, then the massive new voter registrations and minority (read: Black) votes will almost assuredly tip the balance. Republicans tend to get a consistent degree of support from their registered voters, and if this one election were any less crucial I'd say that they'd probably win, although with an unacceptably thin margin again.

But I have the feeling that people are really starting to wake up en mass, and are considering just what another four years of Dubya would cost this country. It still shouldn't be this close, but it is. This time, however, it will be close in our favour.

5 days to go.

We are slowly working...

towards an understanding of the consequences of electing Dubya in 2004. My own family is very well split, but there are a few normally staunch conservatives that are beginning to balk at giving our current White House another four years to run willy-nilly around the world and blow stuff up in the grand delusion that it somehow makes us safer. I really really hope it's not too late, although it appears that the registration rolls in PA favour the Dems by a steady margin, and one thing you can be sure of in this election is that when people register under a party they're going to vote for that party come Nov. 2.

Sweet Merciful Jeebus, less than one week to go.

I watched Jon lay down the law...

to Msrs. Carlson and Begala on the taped and now world-widely distributed edition of Crossfire that Mr. Stewart appeared on. My impressions are thus:

1. He said many things that needed to be said, such as "You're a part of their strategies." "You have a responsibility to the discourse in America." And "The lead-in to my show is about puppets making crank calls. What is wrong with you?"

2. Debate does not involve shouting loud enough to drown out the opposing voices. When Mr. Begala claimed that Crossfire was a "debate show" he ignored this key distinction, and the two gentlemen proceeded to illustrate this by repeatedly interrupting Jon and shouting their points and questions at him.

3. Much of the news that fills up "the cycle" in this era of 24-hour power networks isn't really news at all, but fluffy incidents of little import that are blown into proportions enormous. It's fairly disgusting, and as a trained Journalist it was always one of the turn-off of the profession for me. And it is a powerful and damning statement indeed that some of the best journalism practised in America these days is done by professional comedians.

Sad, yet true. What does it change for Crossfire? Not a whole hell of a lot, except that perhaps a pang of conscience shall visit the minds of those responsible for journalism's downfall, and the citisenry who allow it to happen.

I had to explain...

to the nice man in the coffee shop why my bumper sticker "Bush-Orwell '04: War Is Peace" was an ironic message, and not meant to imply literaly that a state of war means tha there is peace in the world. He was receptive, and open to discussion, so there is hope, but I worry sometimes that I'm being too clever for my own - and Our Republic's - good.

I met the clever girl that had been putting up contrarian Homecoming Queen posters next to the mass-copied photos of semi-attractive guys and gals, messages like "This Toaster For Homecoming Queen: Brought to you by Bread." They've been torn down, but to me that says that at least people see them, for the smaller message at the bottom says "Wake up and vote for something important."

Please Jeebus, bring that date ever closer. 15 days to go.

I Wonder Why...

this particular image from the large collection at Exploding Dog.com is so singularly fascinating to me. On the other hand, I know exactly why, but part of me continually questions. It is a simple, direct, beautiful condemnation of everything this !President has done in the "War On Terror." We all knew that the right thing to do was avoid a costly war waged for a dubious purpose. We now know that we were not only right, but prescient. We knew that Iraq was not a threat to America. We knew that war would not solve our problems, but worsen them. We knew the costs would be devistating, not in lives or money but in spirit, the one thing that America has had from it's first days as a peice of parchment in 18th century Philadelphia to the days following 9/11, when we were all Americans. I wept when a German mourner held a sign up in front of a camera that said "Freiden," because we knew for certain that at that point that we had real hope for a better future for people across the globe.

And now what do we have but contempt? 18 days to go.

How do you trust...

a cafe full of strangers when you have to poo and your laptop is still hooked up to everything and your food and coffee is only halfway eaten? Generally, I do one of two things: Pack it up early. It takes a few seconds to get Pallas disentngled from the local power outlet, but all told it's pretty painless. Most of the time I rely on her size to keep her anchored, the theory being that someone would have to be real real dumb to try and run off with a 17' screened laptop once everyone else in the establishment has seen me bring it in.

And lo, I'm proven right again!

Any suggestions for getting rid of an all-pervasive static electricity field in one's apartment? Every article of clothing I own adheres. AND, as though there were a God and he had set himself to thwarting me in all Earthly endeavours, someone moved into the apartment above mine and almost immediately began playing loud rap music into my kitchen. The change was instant and remarkable. I moved away from the University to move away from the noise and pig-habits of my neighbours, above and below and next of doors. Initially, things went swimmingly, and I treasured the silence that seemed to pervade my new home. I also took comfort in the assurances of my landlord that intra-building disturbances would be met with the most severe disapproval. I shall call them today and discover specifically what actions may be taken, but the issue for me is larger. It is the fact that simple courtesy, the understanding that the actions we take in this universe have instant and real consequences in the lives for other people, has disappeared with the introduction of powerful stereos. It is impossible to walk any street in the cities of America without hearing at least one good string of "Fuckin' bitches and hoes" repeated as refrain to some mindless Casio keyboard bass line. This is an insult to many things, personal dignity and simple privacy foremost among them. And unfortunately, I'm sufficiently offended to fight against it, particularly when such refrains make their way into my private life whether I want them or not. It's Just Wrong.

Dirty stinking...

rotten filthy useless ORGANS! Damn. Whining Now changes nothing about Then, but it can help to ventilate the spleen. Thanks to this disease, over the past few years the doctors seem to have made a habit of taking pictures of the inside of my body. This is fascinating and disturbing at the same time, allowing the suffering patient to observe the cause of their suffering while being powerless to do naught but watch.

I had a similar dream this morning as I lay recovering from said photo-op, in which I witnessed the aftermath of a car crash and was powerless to help anyone but the victim's dog. It was a little grey shaggy thing with a leash, and there was definitely the strong sense that I was useless in any other capacity than to hold on to it should the victim survive. I'm sensing a common thread here.

Watch the debates. Anyone who truly cannot make up their mind, who honestly believes that there is little difference between the two candidates, is merely suffering ignorance. I'm not kidding. At this point, there should be no questions left in the mind of the concerned citizen.