Advice from Bill

Bought a bunch of CDs today, including the new Pink Martini (don't make it seven years before the next album, guys) and the new William Shatner. The latter is very well done, I've found myself tapping a foot and grooving more than once.

The best track, so far, is called You'll Have Time.

Yeah, oh maybe you won't suffer and maybe it's quick
But you'll have time to think
Why did I waste it?
Why didn't I taste it?
You'll have time
You'll have time because you're gonna die

There's a bit where he's saying that and a gospel choir is singing possible ways you'll go.

So the best GOP reaction to seeing Osama Bin Laden alive and well is "It's a little gift." Hooray! We're the GOP and we suck! Further discussion on DKos...

If the Dems still have any money left, they'll run the ad where Bush says, "I truly am not concerned about him," over and over again.

Hang on, little tomato

Listening to an interview with Pink Martini, whose first album in seven years is out. They're talking about a song of theirs about a nun that used to be a former nightclub singer. Like all nuns, really.

There's also a new Pepe and the Bottle Blondes. Rock on!

Just heard a clip of Smirky blathering about how sending mixed signals confuses our friends. How America needs a president who stands firm. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So I'm confused. How is it standing firm to say "I will get Bin Laden dead or alive," then never mention him again for two years and invade a country where he doesn't live? How is it standing firm and resolute to be against the 9/11 commission, then for it, then refuse to testify, then allow staff to testify, then refuse to appear in person, then only appear in person with Cheney in tow and no records, videos, or transcripts? Isn't it sending mixed signals to proclaim yourself "a good steward of the land" and have the worst evironmental of any president?

We need to send his ass back to Crawford. Visualize winning. Not long now.

Bwuh?

I take the day off for personal reasons and the world fucking explodes.

First there's news that Osama Bin Laden is still very much alive. (So much for Bush's "dead or alive" claim from September 17, 2001. Like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target. But you killed a hundred thousand of the wrong people, give or take a couple thousand and forget the wounded. Worst. President. Ever.)

And then I see this nugget from Defamer.

Highly respected, Pulitzer-winning novelist Michael Chabon continues to attract Hollywood's filthy lucre, signing on to write Snow and the Seven, a martial-arts reimagining of Snow White, for Disney.

This will either be very good or very bad. I am guessing very bad. Disney has never been my favorite company ever, particularly after contracting for them for a while.

Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay was magnificent. I could see the art in my head, looking a whole lot like Kirby and Lee at their peak. This martial-arts thing does not sound much like it, unless it's got Karnak in it. (Beware that the link provided has a really shitty picture of Karnak. I cannot find a better one online, alas. Better than this one, though.)

This is what democracy looks like...

Somebody in Milwaukee is distributing this flyer:



This is the kind of Get Out The Vote program the GOP is running. What kind of party depends on voter supression? Why do they hate America so much?

The Republicans are freaking. That's desperation I smell. The Al QaQaa explosives story will not go away. Hearing Rudy Guiliani blame it on the troops this morning was beyond the pale, and this is the guy who makes a living tarnishing the memory of the 9/11 dead.

Some people like this new Eminem video about voting, but it doesn't do a whole lot for me. Wear a hoodie, or whatever. Just vote, even if you have to be convinced to do so by some lame song.

Confused about polls?

Digby compares 2000 and 2004.

But all the polls in the world don't mean much if you don't get out the vote. I'll be doing Trick or Vote this year. What are you going to do?

The buck stops where?

It's always funny to me how the GOP will claim they love our troops, and then shit all over them. Both Bush and Guiliani have taken to blaming the troops for the missing 380 tons of explosives from Al QaQaa.

Only now, a video crew from Minneapolis has fucking photographic evidence that the troops were there but were pulled elsewhere.

They're not even lying creatively anymore. What a bunch of incompetent jackasses. Future historians will look on the last decade, with the combination of shitty journalism and incompetent government, and wonder just what the hell happened. I lived through it and I can't explain it, to be honest.

Dr. Maybe

It's 3 am. Do you know where your giant fighting robot is?

Awake and listening to a cat attempt in vain to get into the basement. Not quite sure why she wants down there, other than I am up and my function in life is opening doors.

Watched the Red Sox win the World Series this evening, which was pretty cool. Totally missed the lunar eclipse, alas.

Somehow, watching the animation of characters in Phantom Brave reminded me of one of the first games I can remember where the character had an idle animation.

Captain Goodnight and the Islands of Fear involved playing as the super-spy Captain Goodnight, battling the forces of your evil arch-nemesis, Dr. Maybe. It was a side-scrolling bunch of goodness, though hard as hell. You'd die a lot. And since there was a time-limit in the game, dying was a bad thing indeed.

There's a lot to recommend the game--the pack-in material and manual were well done and hilarious, as good or better than most of the Infocom games--but one of the things that still sticks with me is that if you left him alone long enough, Goodnight would whip out a yo-yo and start playing with it. Idle animations are commonplace now (Samus fiddling with her beam weapon in Metroid, the various and sundry idles for Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter goofing around, etc.), but in 1985 that was pretty damn cool. He felt more alive than some of his pixelated brethren.

The Underdogs review also mentions Drol, which was another fun platformer, involving rescuing children while ducking objects the game threw at you. This was everything but the kitchen sink. Come to think of it, it may have involved the kitchen sink, too. It's been a while since I've played it.

Common people

Listening to NPR this morning, they seem to have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for undecided voters. They found the one person in America who was upset that Kerry forgot Poland. There are rumors that CBS is spiking a poll that shows Kerry leading Florida by nine (yes, 9) points. I'm agreeing with Atrios and Piggs that it's going to be Kerry in a landslide, but by how much, I have no idea.

Some day I will track down my very own copy of The Transformed Man, William Shatner's first album that you can only get as a British import CD. Until then, there's his new album, Has Been. Kevin pointed me to this clip of him singing that just rocks.

Astronomy update

Checking in on the Mars Rover and Cassini sites, it appears that things are still going pretty well. Today is the day Cassini approaches Titan, in about an hour from now we'll have the playback. A fun example of event horizons, actually--the event has already happened but we won't know anything about it until radio waves travel from Saturn's orbit to here...

Both Spirit and Opportunity were guaranteed for 90 days. Spirit's passed 200 days beyond that limit, and Opportunity is not far behind. I'm reminded of Voyagers 1 and 2, which were doing science for years beyond their theoretical limit.

Best. Endorsement. Ever.

Not only do I approve of the Poor Man's endorsement, I think it is awesome.

The functions of the brain

I can remember every license plate for the cars my parents had when I was a kid. I can, if pressed, name the specific order in which I ate M&Ms as a child, including the colors they don't make any more. My head is full of trivia like every General Mills cereal that had a monster on it, the original lineup of Lucky Charms marshmallows, the specific sound a Kodak 8mm movie camera makes when recording home movies in the 70s.

But despite knowing the majority of dialogue in Star Trek II, having the ability to repeat every line of Star Wars as it's happening in the store (ask Mrs. GFR how annoying this is), or the RAM specifications of all the 680x0 Macs, I cannot remember how algebra works or how the fucked-up version of SQL that Microsoft Access uses works in a report.

It's only been eight years since I used this. Hell, I can still remember the command in Eamon to get 100/100/100 stats, and that was an Apple ][ game that I first played when I was 11. So what the fuck? I used to use Access every damn day for almost two years.

I dunno, I probably blocked it out for my own good. Knowing too much about how to use Office products is bad for you. I'm kinda mad I remember how to Mail Merge.

I need to go to Kansas

Matt Fraction pointed this out to me. A scholarly conference on Godzilla.

I have no doubt there is a panel on giant robots in the Godzilla panetheon. Jet Jaguar, Mogera, or Mecha-Godzilla, to name a few. (Then there's the Marklites that made their first appearance in Invasion of the Mysterions. At least I think that's their first appearance.)

A young four-year-old of my acquaintence preaches the word of Gamera to his classmates. Did you know Gamera has a wonderful plan for your life?

Back to Crawford

When Bush announced he was heading back to Crawford this last weekend, most of the blogs assumed he had another emergency trip to Iraq planned. You know, where the preznit no give me turkee. (Long story.)

But now I think it's just to hide, since the stories about the administration supressing a 9/11 report until after the election and 380 tons of high explosives went missing last year. I'm not sure how either of these are going to be Clinton's or Kerry's fault, but I'm sure Rove is trying to think of SOMETHING.

(Speaking of something, The Poor Man's storyboards for the last Bush ad are priceless.)

Spent a lot of this weekend reading old Tom Strong issues. Some folks were not as happy with this title as other ABC titles, but taken as a whole it's terribly impressive. Part Doc Savage, part Captain Marvel, part Challengers of the Unknown, Tom Strong and his extended family have adventures from the Earth's core to Terra Obscura. Pick this up if you haven't read it.

100 facts

And one opinion:

The Nation lays out the case against the Bush administration.

Also, if you have the stomach for it, go to the GOP site and look at their shitty, shitty ad about wolves and the forest. This reeks of desperation.

Fear and loathing

Woke up this morning to news that the Bush campaign is reducing their ad buys in Oregon, which is basically admitting they cannot win the state. So that's good news.

Hunter S. Thompson tells it like it is:

Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart -- which is more than even the president's friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.

Bush is a natural-born loser with a filthy-rich daddy who pimped his son out to rich oil-mongers. He hates music, football and sex, in no particular order, and he is no fun at all.

I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, but I will not make that mistake again. The joke is over for Nader. He was funny once, but now he belongs to the dead. There is nothing funny about helping George Bush win Florida again. Nader is a fool, and so is anybody who votes for him in November -- with the obvious exception of professional Republicans who have paid big money to turn poor Ralph into a world-famous Judas Goat.

Nader has become so desperate and crazed that he's stooped to paying homeless people to gather signatures to get him on the ballot. In Pennsylvania, the petitions he submitted contained tens of thousands of phony signatures, including Fred Flintstone, Mickey Mouse and John Kerry. A judge dumped Ralph from the ballot there, saying the forms were "rife with forgeries" and calling it "the most deceitful and fraudulent exercise ever perpetrated upon this court."

But they will keep his name on the ballot in the long-suffering Hurricane State, which is ruled by the President's younger brother, Jeb, who also wants to be the next President of the United States. In 2000, when they sent Jim Baker down to Florida, I knew it was all over. The fix was in. In that election, 97,488 people voted for Nader in Florida, and Gore lost the state by 537 votes. You don't have to be from Texas to understand the moral of that story. It's like being out-coached in the Super Bowl. There are no rules in the passing lane. Only losers play fair, and all winners have blood on their hands.

There's more, and you should read it.

Played a bunch of PS2 demos last night. Ghost in the Shell was kinda cool, but there's something about games based on that series that don't do much for me. Sure, it's fun to run around shooting stuff, but the levels were pretty basic and the enemies just sort of stand there and let you shoot them. On the other hand, you are in Section 9, so you're just so damn cool that of course they're going to be stunned.

Robotech: Invasion was somewhat disappointing. I wanted to like it, really I did. But take the most depressing Robotech series, add in a game which boils down to running in circles and firing a couple hundred rounds at giant Invid, sprinkle with some useless transformation (You can go from a guy on foot to... a guy... on a motorcycle! WOO!), and you're left with... not much.

On the other hand, there was the new Ratchet and Clank. I liked it, I liked it a lot. Though the demo for Up Your Arsenal didn't have very interactive environments like in Going Commando. I'm guessing it was mostly that it was an early build, though. I'm a huge fan of these games, so I'll be picking that up soon. (It comes out on Election Day, even, so maybe I'll play that instead of watching the returns. Oh. Wait. I think maybe I was going to go to a party that night. Not sure now. Odds are I'll be spending the day doing get out the vote.)

The last demo I played was Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. I totally loved the first Metal Gear Solid. Played the heck out of it. (It also helped that there was a Versus Books guide, makers of the best FF7 guide known to man. That gem can fetch over $100 on eBay if you have one and want to sell it. I won't be selling mine...) But MGS2 and now MGS3 have not been as much fun, in my mind. Perhaps it's the over-emphasis on style over gameplay. It could be the controls. In order to do some of the fun stuff, you have to have 3 buttons pressed simultaneously. And you have to do it all the time. Playing a game should not be like trying to Ctrl-Alt-Delete a stupid Windows box.

Less than two weeks to go.

Come for the poetry, stay for the pointers to funny political stuff. Or something. They made me laugh over at Pandagon:

So Dick Cheney, attired in the Cloak of Malevolence (+5 sneer) and wielding the Scepter of Misdirection (-3 truth), has accused Kerry of not being "tough" or "aggressive" enough to stop terrorists from detonating a nuclear bomb in a major American city (I'm serious -- that's his charge). Momentarily sidelining the fact that, of the 4 men occupying slots on the tickets, Kerry is the only one to have personally killed other human beings or seen combat, this statement reflects exactly what's wrong with the Bush/Cheney conception of the War on Terrorism.

How desperate are you when you accuse your opponent of being directly responsible for destroying civilians? The Bush administration continually pushes the boundaries on redefining chutzpah, after all the stuff that's happened on their watch. Unless it was the junior senator from Massachusetts who ignored Richard Clarke's repeated warnings...

Remind you of anyone?

Alice had a meme that I am finally getting around to.

The Second Coming -- W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I always hear the voice of Andreas Katsulas reading this in my head. There's a scene in Babylon 5 where he reads most of this poem that is one of the high points of that series for me.

Back to the grindstone...

One of my projects for work involves creating blogs. So somehow now I am the blogmeister, and my name isn't even Atrios or Kos! Which, come to think of it, is good as nobody growing up would have been able to spell them.

It's very much October weather here now. I really want a cup of tea and some scones with clotted cream, but I'm not sure when that is going to happen. I also need to borrow somebody to help me move something heavy, but I have no idea who.

See, this is where Man-in-a-Can would come in handy. (For those of you who never saw the animated Tick series, it was an invention that had potpurri-, sandalwood- or pine-scented automatons who could do heavy lifting and/or massage.) Good luck in finding them, as they have yet to release this series on DVD. You can get Full House or Dukes of Hazzard, but no animated Tick.

Life is cruel.

Option paralysis

After a lovely breakfast of chicken-friend tempeh (in almond gravy), we went to Powell's. I had a gift certificate, so I had to figure out just what I was going to spend it on. After much hemming and hawing, I decided on getting the trade for The Inhumans. As Karnack says, "I have discovered the weakness in this page! By clicking on a link, I go to another one!" Well, something like that.

I also saw this bit of graffiti, which amused me.

Royale Feast

Spent this evening in the company of very dear friends, who helped me celebrate my birthday by consuming mass quantities of Moroccan food at Marrakesh.

Dinner this evening:

• Lentil soup (with garlic, chickpeas, tomato, lentils, lime juice, etc.)


• Salad Marrakesh (tomatoes, lettuce, celery, carrot, eaten with chunks of bread)


• Bastela Royale (chicken, almonds, egg, honey, all baked in a puff pastry, lightly dusted with powdered sugar)


• Chicken with Lemon and Olives


• Chicken with Honey and Prunes


• Lamb with Eggplant


• Lamb Couscous


• Apricot Chicken


• Compote with apples, mangoes, and bananas


• Moroccan Mint-Orange tea

(And for me, a piece of baklava with a candle next to it.) The bread used as a utensil for the salad had a lovely anise component. There were no other utensils, so we were eating chicken and couscous with our fingers. And of course, there was belly dancing. Add in the wine and the company, and a wonderful time was had by all. Thanks, guys.

I must find a way to get that tea again, as it was wonderful. Part of it may have been the presentation, which is the nicest I've seen since having a Spanish Coffee at Huber's. Which, if you're ever in town, you should do. Alcohol + fire == fun!

I may never need to eat again after all that food, though. Wow.

Diagnosis: Sassy!

Feeling better this morning after yesterday's excursion to the realm of Craptastic Health. Spending the morning catching up on blogs (this thread on dKos is both fascinating and terrifying) and playing Kingdom of Loathing.

A selection of events of note from this day (Courtesy of the Wikipedia):
Events
1775 - Portland, Maine burned by the British
1781 - George Washington captures Yorktown, Virginia
1793 - Marie Antoinette, daughter of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and
wife of Louis XVI and hence Queen Consort of France, was guillotined at the
height of the French Revolution.
1934 - Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong begin their Long March
1984 - Desmond Tutu awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Births
1430 - James II of Scotland (d. 1460)
1758 - Noah Webster, American lexicographer
1854 - Oscar Wilde, Irish writer (d. 1900)
1888 - Eugene O'Neill, American playwright (d. 1953)
1890 - Michael Collins, Irish patriot (d. 1922)
1925 - Angela Lansbury, actress
1958 - Tim Robbins, American actor, director, writer
1962 - Flea, bassist (Red Hot Chili Peppers)
1974 - Paul Kariya, hockey star

In addition, there was my own birth on this same date. It's also Boss's Day in the US, which is stupid. Every day save Labor Day is Boss's Day. But I suppose I am being mean, not thinking of the poor, oppressed boss sitting in an office and slaving away over a hot secretary or golf club.

The most important television program... ever.

Jon Stewart went out to appear on CNN's Crossfire, and he gave Tucker Carlson the reaming he so richly deserves.

CARLSON: I do think you're more fun on your show. Just my opinion.

(CROSSTALK)

CARLSON: OK, up next, Jon Stewart goes one on one with his fans...

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show.

And PBS gave Tucker his own show. Between that and NPR's continued employment of Cokie Roberts or Juan Williams or Barbara Bradley-Haggerty, it's a wonder they still think they can get any of my money during pledge drives.

Novelty use only

My friend Courtney once worked in a porn shop in the south, where the... um... mechanical aids were illegal to sell except for novelty use. So every vibrator and phallus in the place had a sticker proclaming Novelty use only.

That's what immediately came to mind when I saw this Gizmodo review of a Cybernetic Bong. It's got adjustable temperature, the smoking chamber is illuminated by blue LEDs, and it can vaporize the crap out of any plant matter. So yeah, it's for quitting smoking.

Went to the DMV today, where it only took me an hour to get a new license. There's a huge difference between the old and new licenses, but at least now I look like my ID, which hasn't been the case for two years.

Also went to Hannah Bea's for lunch. You should go there. Hopefully they will have the banana pudding when you go, as it is ambrosia. Ambrosia, I tell you.

And now for something completely different

Giant microbes. Plush giant microbes.

The Black Death is CUTE!

(I found these looking for an image to use for virus alerts in our GeekLog.)

Let them eat community college

More on the "No Child Left Behind as panacea" thread:

This bit's from Kevin Drum, formerly of CalPundit and now at Washington Monthly:

At the time he made it, it struck me as nothing more than a routine politician-speak answer, basically not a big deal. But it got the biggest reaction of the night from my wife: she felt insulted. "Jobs aren't going overseas because they're better educated," she said, "they're going overseas because labor costs half as much." She was steamed.

That surprised me, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention. I wonder how many other people felt the same way?

I know of a couple people. Basically everybody who's in a survival job they hate beacause the alternative is to be unemployed and without healthcare in Bush's America.

I mean, when COBRA eats up most of your unemployment, what do you live off of? A while back, Cheney suggested that eBay would solve our problems.

More cranky than usual because my boss at work just suggested I give the thing I've been doing at work that's actually interesting to somebody else, so I can work on the boring photocopying she's obsessed that I do all the time.

Perhaps I should go back to school so I can really learn how to photocopy well!

Post-debate spin

So far it's another slam-dunk by Kerry.

That makes them three-for-three, or four out of four victories if you include the vice-presidential debates.

The blogs are bringing up something that I forgot in my last post: Every single question, when Bush didn't have an answer, became a question about education. Bush basically said that the cause of unemployment is people being stupid. Therefore the answer is to make schools better.

Yes, of course, Mr. President. The reason so many companies have gone bankrupt, laid off everybody, or outsourced jobs to India is that the US was hit with a massive stupidity bomb during your inauguration.

It would explain a lot, actually. Except how will we overcome our mineshaft gap? No Child Left Behind won't cover it. Plus, it's a colossal failure to boot.

The only program I can think of in the last four years that has worked has been the Enrich Halliburton plan. The environment is a failure. (And note to Bob, you asked two questions about religion but none about the very world we live in? You suck.) The economy is still awful. Iraq is going to be a synonym for clusterfuck in the next OED.

Better start packing your crap, Bushie. You'll be heading back to Texas real soon now.

Third of three

The final Bush/Kerry debate was tonight, and it was pretty subdued.

Here's the final tally from Olbermann's blog:

Points Scoring: The Scorer's Table unenthusiastically reports this bout as going to Senator John Kerry by 12 rounds to 4, with 5 rounds even. On individual points, Senator Kerry is awarded a net total of 19 points, and President Bush a net of 2, having undermined his own effort with no less than eight points subtracted, three of them in a disastrous 12th Round in which the President had to be told time was up, answered a question with, in essence, 'all of the above,' and stumbled by inadvertently criticizing himself by claiming the borders of Texas were tighter than they'd been when he was Governor there. He also lost points for having twice invoked the 2000 election, and for once having given back at least a minute of time when the question hadn't really been answered.

The Scorer's Table acknowledges that the chief scorer was in a surly mood because he was kept from Yankee Stadium. New York leads Boston, 3-1, bottom eight, with Boston threatening.

I think Kerry locked up his base, with great answers about Latinos, women, and African-Americans. Plus, Bush lied like a dog when he said he was always concerned about Osama Bin Laden.

He was also smirking like crazy, making an incredibly lame joke about CBS before stopping himself. The moderator may have been the worst ever, tossing up softball questions about religion and not a damn one about stem cells or the environment.

But hey, log into whatmakesgeorgetick.com for a chance to win a backwards-running watch!

All politics is local

Digby does the hard work so you don't have to. The comments at FreeRepublic about Christopher Reeve's death reveal a depth of ugliness and hatred that would make Goebbels blush.

Prior to the Milgram Experiments, people used to claim that facism would never happen here. After that and looking at some of the wacko conservative blogs, I'm not so sure.

Also, it looks like the No On 36 group has a real shot at making Oregon the only state in the Union to defeat a ban on same-sex marriage. This is all so much nonsense until it hits the Supreme Court, of course, but that's yet another reason we need to get rid of Chimpy McYellsALot.

Wanda and the Colossus

It's one of those times where I wish I read and spoke Japanese.

Sony Japan's site has some footage and screens from Wanda and the Colossus, the latest project from the team that made Ico. Ico is one of my all-time favorite games, combining emotion, imagery, and gameplay in a way seldom seen before or since.

Hrm. Maybe I should play that game again.

The Man of Tomorrow

As most of you probably know by now, Christopher Reeve died. If only we had an administration that believed in science instead of ideology.

Today is also the anniversary of my grandfather's death, so I'm thinking about that a lot. He and my brother shared a birthday, which is the day before mine, and that is coming up as well.

Maybe this is why my dad never wanted any commemoration of the event, saying, "It's just another day."

Bark bark bark

Another day of canvassing again, though far fewer people were home today. Probably because it was a very nice day today.

This round went much faster, partially because many knocks went unanswered. I'd also had a bit of practice, so there was not as much verbal stumbling on my part. The best part, for me, was the young man I met who hadn't registered yet, so we got him taken care of. He should get his card this week, just in time for the vote-by-mail ballots to arrive. I can't figure out whether he was more excited about it, or I was.

One of the DKos posters has been burning copies of Going Upriver and handing them to undecideds. This is a pretty cool idea, though not everybody has a DVD player. Here's a download site, if you're interested. Alternatively, there's this one. So I'll definitely keep this in mind for my next excursion.

Hit the streets

Off for another day of knocking on doors.

One unexpected benefit I've found to canvassing--I've met a lot of nice cats and dogs so far. Elections: come for the people, stay for the pets.

Canvassing

I live in Oregon, which is more of a battleground state than one might think.

Along with a couple hundred other folks, I spent about half the day walking through neighborhoods, looking for folks who haven't registered yet, trying to convince the undecideds, and making sure that people mail in their ballots as soon as possible. (All of Oregon's voting is vote-by-mail.)

It was a somewhat positive experience. ACT has some great organization--my partner today was from Hillsboro Democrats and kept commenting how much better the Portland ACT effort was.

I interrupted a lot of people watching football, a couple guys talking about motorcycles, one nearly-asleep baby, and a saxophone lesson.

So far most people that I talked to (many folks were just not home today, not surprising on a weekend) were leaning or very much for Kerry, though the two Bush voters were extraordinarily smug about it. I thanked them anyway and moved on.

My feet are tired but I'll be back on the streets tomorrow. Hopefully it won't rain as much.

What the fuck was that?

I mean, other than watching the US President melt down on live TV.

Bush was angry, confused, blinking like he was trying to answer in Morse code instead of speaking, and acted mostly as an embarrassment to himself and his party.

Kerry was calm, cool, collected, remembered the names of people asking questions, and addressed the issues directly. Bush nearly attacked the moderator, for the sake of fucking. He's toast.

When asked to name three mistakes, he didn't even come up with one.

At least Bush might be able to sell some wood on the Internets. (At least until eBay closes the listing.) He can also try needsumwood.com, I suppose.

(They spent millions of dollars investigating the Clintons for their land investments, but not even George Bush himself knows he owned a timber company?)

Now Hiring

It's a rainy, crappy day right now, but one of the highlights so far was running into a nice woman recruiting for Americans Coming Together. They're hiring, right now.

Now would be an excellent weekend to go register voters or knock on doors. She asked me if I knew anybody, so of course I thought of all of you.

Gary Busey and the weasels

Seen on both Wacky Neighbor and a message from BeaucoupKevin, so it must be fate. What would it be like if George Bush and Gary Busey met? I think... it would go something... like this.

The job numbers came out today, and they were not the 1.6 million jobs Bush required to be at a net gain in jobs in his administration. 90,000 jobs in the last month, pertty damn anemic. Note that we need at least 150,000 jobs/month to keep up with population growth. And they revised last month's jobs down. These numbers are a far cry from the numbers used to justify the tax cut for the wealthy.

As his campaign becomes increasingly desperate and dangerous, look for more shenanigans. They've already announced vague alert warnings for schools. As the poll numbers go down, expect the alert level to go up. (JuliusBlog did a bit about this a few months ago.)

The O'Leilly Factor

Bill tried to be charming tonight on the Daily Show, but he came off as an ass.

The weirdest part, for me, is that he claimed that the Bush administration was isolated because people are trying to kill them.

Actually, he may be on to something. It's not much of a strech from Rumsfeld or Ashcroft or Rice or Cheney or Bush talking to a crazy guy on the bus talking about the CIA mind control devices in cats or Buddha's ghost penis that lives in your cereal.

Atrios predicts!

He was pretty spot-on last week, so here's his prediction for tomorrow:

But, here's the deal. Coming into debate 2, Bush hasn't got anything. He can't hide behind his "compassionate conservatism face" which he used in 2000 - that was tossed in the garbage. He can't hide behind "war president face" because last week we all saw what a joke that is. All he's got left is the real face - sulky fratboy/petulant child.

I think he's on to something. Bush tricked a couple of networks into carrying his "important policy speech" and all it turned out to be was his standard stump speech in front of a hand-picked crowd. Not the way to prepare for a possibly-hostile town hall crowd. On the other hand, as the Poor Man points out, Bush is the master of hard work.

Work has been busy as fuck this week. I've been editing a ton of GeekLog scripts to make a site that people will probably end up ignoring. But hey, I've learned a lot.

Currently reading 1602 in addition to the Richard Clarke book. Preparing for my weekend of canvassing people and registering new voters in the last drive before the deadline of 10/12. Are you registered?

Expect to see more acts of desperation from the Bush campaign. They will say and do anything to get elected.

/path/to/geeklog/config.php

So one of the things I've been doing at work is creating and maintaining a blog.

I originally thought this free package called GeekLog was going to be the answer, but the more I use it, the more limitations I find. To wit:

• Only one topic per story
• Only one blog per installation, so if you want a second blog you have to re-install the thing
• Adding stories is annoying and tricky
• Files are stored in strange places. Some of them appear to be in the site folder, while others are stored in the geeklog folder and there doesn't appear to be a good source as to which is which.
• The author's not terribly helpful.

I think I'll be investigating this other site more. Whee.

Tonight on the Daily Show, Bill O'Leilly is on. Since he called the audience of TDS a bunch of stoned slackers the other day, one can only imagine how much fun this is going to be.

Dick Cheney is friend to all children

Watched a little of the debate last night, then went to celebrate my friend Mark's birthday. Cheney looked tired and lame, and if the best he can do is say that John Edwards didn't show up in the Senate enough, that's pretty goddamn sad. His own record is nothing to be proud of.

Cheney’s Legislative Career by the Numbers

96th Congress: 4 Sponsored; 0 became Law
97th Congress: 4 Sponsored: 0 became Law
98th Congress: 8 Sponsored: 0 became Law
99th Congress: 7 Sponsored: 1 became Law
(H.R.1246 : A bill to establish a federally declared floodway for the Colorado River below Davis Dam.)
100th Congress: 7 Sponsored: 1 became Law
(H.R.712 : A bill for the relief of Lawrence K. Lunt.)
101st Congress: 1 Sponsored: 0 became Law

Oh, and then there's this slam dunk by Edwards:

The vice president, I'm surprised to hear him talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors.

He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

It's not like Uncle Dick has a lot of room to talk. And speaking of which, if you're going to say you've never met somebody before, don't have photographic evidence to the contrary. He lies about this, he continually lies about a connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, he can't be trusted to tell you the time of the day or whether the sun is out.

No plot, no problem

Not only is the election coming, but it will be my third year for NaNoWriMo. I've done it twice before, writing 50,000 words in 30 days or so. Well, the first one comes out to 63K, but the last 13,000 were the hardest. The second one was just over 50K and could be polished into something decent with a bit of work.

The NaNo website's been totally redone, which is cool. They've modified their phpBB so that you only see the regions you choose to belong to. Which is good, since it saves you time scrolling through all of the state and local boards you don't have time to read. And there are four choices of icons this year, which is good since I hated the one choice last year. Well, hated is a strong word. Disliked. A lot.

I haven't really thought a lot about what I'll be writing about this year. Part of this is historical, as the first time I did it, I didn't decide I was going to do it until October 30. So planning too much feels like jinxing it. On the other hand, plotting ahead is good, as you don't feel as much like you're making it up as you're going along. Still, I've read published novels that are worse in that regard, so I suppose it's on a huge problem.

So if you've nothing to do, or lots to do, I highly recommend it. Even if you don't finish, it's a fun adventure. Or you could just play X-Men: Legends. That would be OK, too.

Hrm. It's almost one in the morning. Perhaps I should try getting some sleep.

Any lie becomes the truth if you say it often enough

Oliver Willis (who I really should add to the blogroll on the side) has a great set of clips about the GOP and the way they run on a record of failure. Many thanks to Brennan Houlihan for his hard work in putting this together. All that's missing is Bush chanting "hard work" and "mixed messages" in last week's debate.

It's like when Milhouse becomes Fallout Boy and says "jiminy jillikers" so often the words lose all meaning.

Ah, the Simpsons. Is there anything they cannot teach us?

Against All Enemies

After reading three Jasper Fforde novels in a row, I thought it was time to take a break from Thursday Next and her adventures. So now I'm reading Against All Enemies by Richard Clarke. It's a fascinating read, though quite aggravating. He recounts the events of September 11 in detail, including Bush asking him that day to make sure that Iraq was behind it. Later, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Powell get into the act, leading him to say:

"I thought I was missing something here," I vented. "Having been attacked by al Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor."

Clarke, R. Against All Enemies. pp 30-31. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004.

Worth reading, particularly now that the paperback edition has a new forward and supporting materials from the 9/11 Commission. (Speaking of the Commission, I see that Condi is again saying that Iraq was trying to build nuclear weapons. Even though this has been shown to be a colossal lie. Why does this woman have a job? Why has nobody been fired from this administration?)

Continually watching the VolcanoCam, though right now it looks like just a cloud and not an eruption.

Two ads worth watching, one from the New Dems and one from the DCCC. A little long for our attention-deficit culture, but they could be shortened with little problem.

Kerry in lead

Newsweek, which not long ago said that Bush was up by 11 points and implied the Kerry campaign was on its last legs, now says that Kerry is ahead.

CNN says that it's now a close race or a tie.

Gonna be a bumpy ride for the next 30 days. Make your voice heard, through donations, volunteering, and voting. To borrow a phrase from John Edwards, help is on the way.

The stuff that dreams are made of

Spent last night watching Turner Classic Movies. They played Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon in tribute to Peter Lorre. I'd forgotten how good Lorre is in The Maltese Falcon. They were talking before the start of the film how the director had been a fan of his, but even he was blown away by the rushes. One of my friends used to live in Dashiel Hammett's old apartment, and I've been to the corner of Stockton and Bush where Archer gets shot. (There's even a plaque on the wall there.) It's a little different than it appears in the film, but I somehow doubt they drove all the way up to San Francisco for shooting on location.

Casablanca surprised me with how much I liked it--for some reason I'd never seen the whole thing before. There's a ton of stuff going on, what with the looming spectre of the Nazis, the desperate search by a Hungarian couple for a visa to America, the love triangle between Rick, Ilsa, and Lazlo. Often made reference to, but sorta like how James Cagney never said, "You dirty rat," Humphrey Bogart never says, "Play it again, Sam." I did have an overwhelming urge for smoking and drinking by the end, of course.

Today we've been to breakfast, where the Kerry/Edwards button on my jacket prompted a nice conversation with one of the locals (Hi, Chris!) in the diner about the debates, how Bush is running the country into the ground, etc. There's a streak in Republicans that says they have the best handle on policy and thought because their wealth (on the whole) allows them more schooling, but the Teamster we talked to today had a better grasp of economics and labor policy than Alan Greenspan or Reagan/Bush and their voodoo economics.

The next debate after the Vice-Presidential snaps contest is domestic policy. I am going to love to see Bush attempt to explain how giving Bill Gates $90,000 to spend on outsourcing jobs to India is going to help the economy more than giving working families an extra $1500 to spend on fixing their houses and buying durable goods. (Most of the Bush tax "cut" goes to the richest 2%, who don't need it. The majority of Americans get about $200 in fed tax reduction, which then gets taken away in increased local taxes, increased cost of living, etc. He's putting money in your back pocket and taking it out of your front pocket.)

Mixed messages

Piggs pointed this out in the comments, but it's worth taking a gander at:

Rising Hegemon has the debate in pictures. I know that I am particularly fond of image 8. Then there's this perspective from the O'Reilly pages.

Of course, if the war were a programming project, it'd never have gotten management approval in the first place. What are our requirements? What are our milestones? How are we doing? How do we know when the project is over? What's the timeframe for completion? What's the success metric? Is the iRaq project really the best way to beef up the company's security?

But if you're the president or share his insane vision of the world, it's "mixed messages" that are the problem. He must have accused Kerry of that a dozen times. (What is it with him and alliteration?) By the way, take a look at the Faces of Frustration video from the DNC. A minute of the real faces of Bush, who has lived in a bubble so long that an actual opposing view leaves him dumbfounded.

Bush, like many in the GOP, accuses people of things he does himself. What kind of a mixed message is it to say you support the troops and then cut their health care and their pay? It's a mixed message to say you will leave no child behind and then not fund the program. It's a mixed message to say that you will participate in the Kyoto treaty while you're campaiging, and then withdraw from it the minute you're appointed to office. And it's a mixed message to say you will capture Osama dead or alive and then not mention him again for three years.

Kerry crushed in the debates last night. And this was, in theory, the President's strongest suit--international affairs. All I know is that I'd rather have a president who can pronounce "nuclear" correctly and string words together into a thing we like to call sentences than a petulant man-child who's out of touch, out of control, and will soon be out of a job.