Esteem (thanks, Stephanie).

Need to feel liked?

Look at that there participle a-danglin' there!

Below, I wrote:

Occasionally I designate a "personal day," where I resolutely refuse to make lunches, play with them, etc.

It's a sad day indeed when a father refuses to play with lunches.

Listen to my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Here's Corned Beef and Cabbage (1.9 MB mp3), an entry in the KVR monthly song contest. Naturally, the first month I entered set the record for number of entries: 87. I'll be lucky to make the top 80.

Trials.

Being a professional father is not a hard job. I know, according to the prevailing zeitgeist, I'm supposed to say, "Parenting is the hardest job in the world," but you know what? That's not the case. Shocking, I know. Here you were all thinking that I had it even worse than a commercial fisherman, a sweatshop worker, or an Iraqi policeman, and I ruin your preconceptions. (I have very few friends with kids, and now the ones without 'em will no longer buy me drinks after I've had a hard day with sick children, like today.)

Nonetheless, being a full-time parent (what a silly idiom--who isn't a full-time parent?) does have its own set of trials and tribulations:

• Sloth. When I was working outside the home, I would religiously shave and brush my teeth. (Which religion? I'm an atheist.) Now, I sit here typing this blog with three days' growth of stubble on my face. What's worse, I only brush my teeth in the evening now, even though I think it's disgusting. There just doesn't seem to be a reason to take care of myself.
  
• Leisure (or lack thereof). I have it pretty cushy, I know. Many people would kill to be able to stay home with their kids all day. But there's a flip side to this: I never really have a day off. Sure, on the weekends I get a hired hand, also known as my wife, to help out. But seven days a week I do my job, except under rare circumstances. Occasionally I designate a "personal day," where I resolutely refuse to make lunches, play with them, etc. Unless things are really bad, I make sure that doesn't happen when K is at work.
  
• Self-esteem. Everyone thinks they should be in a different place than they are, so I can't really claim I'm unique in saying that I didn't expect to be a full-time dad. But the Big Lie of the western world--or maybe I should call it the Big Expectation--that the man is supposed to bring home the bacon--well, that's ingrained pretty well into my soul. Especially since I basically grew up in a bachelor household, and my father's identity was and is bound up in his work. That I don't hold a "paying" job is sometimes a source of great shame to me. Even if you factor in the cost of day care.
  
• Temper. Regular readers--yes, you and you--know that I have trouble keeping my anger in check at times. So do my kids. And when we both holler at each other, which happens more often than I'd like... well, it's nasty.
  
• Time management. Uninterrupted blocks of time are so scarce that if I have personal projects on which I work, I inevitably wind up sacrificing the kids--or getting angry at them if they interrupt me (see Temper, above). But more than that, I can never budget enough time to just get out the door; no matter how hard I try, we're always five minutes late for everything.
  
• Lust. Some stay-at-home fathers, I'm told, are so bored during the down time that they just surf the Internet, looking at porn. Not me, of course. I would never do such a thing.

ooo-WEEE-oo-oo!

God damn it. I recently got into the Beach Boys (K got me Pet Sounds for Christmas, and I bought a compilation off iTunes after I got my iPod) and I had been meaning to blog about it for a long time now. I just never got around to it. Now, though, I can't, because it'll seem like I'm stalking Laura again. Stupid cosmic coincidences.

Bloat.

I've had to battle "gigabyte creep" on my laptop's hard drive. Not a big surprise, really, for someone who works in video as much as I do. Them movies is expensive. Anyway, I deleted some of the usual suspects: animations which I had finished, old versions of WAV files that have been replaced, and I got rid of a couple gigabytes that way.

Then, I cast a baleful eye on my applications folder, and in particular my cherished WWII first-person shooters. I mean, I love Battlefield 1942 (2.8 GB), Call of Duty (2.2 GB), and Medal of Honor (1.7 GB), but this machine (our only one powerful enough to run them) is after all supposed to be my work computer. But doesn't all work and no play make Jack a dull boy? Ah, the pain! My mouse pointer hovered over the games...

I took one last look around my home folder, and saw a nondescript directory labeled "Final Cut Express documents." Ah, yes, the detritus of my video editor. So how much is that, I wonder?

Click. "Get Info." Oh, 17 gigabytes.

Seventeen gigabytes?! What am I doing, editing Lawrence of Arabia?

At least now I know what to get rid of. That is, if I can archive all this stuff.

How can I justify buying a musical toy when all my training, interest, and skill was left at college over ten years ago? I better stop writing this entry before the pity party starts.

Today is my wife's birthday.

Happy birthday, K. May you live another [undisclosed number of] years, and may I get even halfway to deserving you.

Come with me to the metal wheel, we shall make beautiful music together.

Music, by hamsters.

Life is short, and there is more to it than APPLIANCES!

Haven't posted one of these in a while...

I Am A: Neutral Good Half-Elf Ranger Bard

Alignment:
Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'.

Race:
Half-Elves are a cross between a human and an elf. They are smaller, like their elven ancestors, but have a much shorter lifespan. They are sometimes looked down upon as half-breeds, but this is rare. They have both the curious drive of humans and the patience of elves.

Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.

Secondary Class:
Bards are the entertainers. They sing, dance, and play instruments to make other people happy, and, frequently, make money. They also tend to dabble in magic a bit.

Deity:
Mielikki is the Neutral Good goddess of the forest and autumn. She is also known as the Lady of the Forest, and is the Patron of Rangers. Her followers are devoted to nature, and believe in the positive and outreaching elements of it. They use light armor, and a variety of weapons suitable for hunting, which they are quite skilled at. Mielikki's symbol is a unicorn head.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan (e-mail)

AAARGH!

Every single time...

For my regular readers.

Today, I am moved to give something back. Maybe it's because I can now listen to music while vacuuming, maybe it's because my son's ear infection is getting better, maybe I'm just high. Anyway, with so few readers of this blog I can't afford to take y'all for granted, so here are some things, some small things, for my regulars, at least those I know about.

These are all bootleg recordings, so although posting them may be technically illegal, at the very least I'm not taking money out of the artists' pockets. They'll only be up for a week or so, so grab 'em while they're hot. They're all in MPEG-4 audio format, suitable for iPod, iTunes, or QuickTime player. Be sure to right-click and save unless you know that your browser is set up to handle .m4a correctly.

First of all, for Clarence, one day past your birthday: a live version of Imagine, the only known recording of John Lennon playing it on guitar. Recorded at the Apollo in New York in December of 1971. Don't worry, you still know more about the Beatles than I do.

For Godfrey, a solo acoustic version of Bruce Cockburn's song If I Had a Rocket Launcher. You know why.

For Mike: I'm not sure if you are a regular reader anymore, but I know you're a Paul Simon fan, so I offer up Bridge Over Troubled Water from Simon and Garfunkel's recent tour. This was recorded at the MCI Center in D.C., one night before K and I saw them.

And for Laura: this is a tough one. I don't have any bootlegs of the Beach Boys, Dylan, or The Band. So I chose, simply, another beautiful Bruce Cockburn song, called Open. I hope you enjoy it.

Joining the game.

So I bought an iPod the other day. No, not an iPod shuffle--my one sacrifice to non-comformity is that I stay One Cool Thing Behind, so I went for an iPod mini. The shuffle is cool and cheap, but half my reason for wanting a music player of any kind was to be able to play specific songs--say, something I just wrote--over my stereo immediately. And the shuffle wouldn't cut it for that.

Plus, I already owned a mini dock. Don't ask why.

It's a nice little machine. And my gosh, the click wheel has got to be the best piece of human interface design on the planet. It was beyond intuitive. It was instinctual.

Unfortunately, as anyone who knows me will realize, I'm not a headphones kind of person. Oh, sure, I'll wear them if I'm working on music or gaming. But when I'm out and about, I find my music in the ambient noise of the world. (Ooooh, purple prose!) Listening to a Walkman (I always think of them as Walkmen--I'm a child of the '80s) is such an inherently anti-social act, and frankly it repulses me, unless I really want to be alone. But even then, as I said, I'd rather listen to the birds chirp, the cars drive by, the boomboxes next door pound--

Oh, wait. That's why I bought it.

Not a dime a dozen?

I had a friend in college who got really upset the first time Michael Jordan retired. Well, he wasn't a friend, more like an aquaintance. Well, no actually, I just plain didn't like him. He was the kind of economics major who thought about the whole world in terms of economics--for instance, he was against the death penalty not for moral, scientific, or social reasons, but because it cost too much to hold someone on Death Row during the appeals process. "If we executed them quicker, it would cost less, and I'd be for it," he said once. He was that kind of guy. Anyway, he was a Chicagoan and revered Jordan, so when the retirement happened and I said, "Not to be callous, but so what?" he was incredibly pissed off at me. He knew that I revered the playwright Arthur Miller, and said "How would you like it if I said that when Arthur Miller died?"

Well, of course, Michael Jordan hadn't died, just retired--and as history showed, he could unretire himself, and did so twice. But now, Arthur Miller will never write another play.

I wanted to be a playwright once, and Miller was my idol. I think I've read more of his plays than most doctoral theater students, and I'm even one of the few people to direct one of his later plays: "Some Kind of Love Story," a one-act. Very few of Miller's later plays garnered attention, but I read them anyway. Some were bad, some were brilliant. All were Arthur Miller.

I admit, probably some of my affection for him came from his living in Connecticut, like me. He was also born in Brooklyn, like me. From thereon, there aren't any similarities, but I'll take what I can.

When I was in high school and college, it was very fashionable for snot-nosed kids like me (and the theater folks with whom I hung out) to denigrate Miller, pointing out that "he only wrote Death of a Salesman and nothing else," as if Death of a Salesman wasn't enough to put anyone on the map. But we were more impressed by Edward Albee, especially in his avant-garde phase; Miller was just so conventional. Or so we thought. Never mind that he built a play around his life, After the Fall, which was wonderfully avant-garde. Never mind that he also wrote a less well-known, but incredibly theatrical, play called The American Clock, about the Great Depression, which used vaudeville of all things as a jumping-off point. (And never mind that Salesman certainly wasn't his only theatrical success.)

Still, I was a closet Miller lover, and I think time has proved me right. There's just something simple and primal about his work, and he deserves his place in the pantheon of American theater.

I'll miss him...

Shazam!

And I thought my first eBay sale was successful; I just listed, sold, and shipped my Technics receiver in under two hours. Damn!

It can't always be this easy... can it?

Slalom week.

It's been a week of ups and downs, but I think on average the ups won--which is a good thing by any standards.

Down: K and D were both sick enough to stay home--D only one day, fortunately, but K missed two days of work. And one of those days she was essentially bedridden, poor thing. It's all because of Super Bowl Sunday. (And I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that I first typo'ed that as Super Bowel Sunday, which was appropriate considering K's symptoms.) They went to a party and I didn't; they got sick and I didn't. Of course, E went to the party also, which mucks up the hypothesis, but whatcha gonna do?

Down: I wasn't throwing up, but I was recovering from a cold, and the coughing and hacking were enough to throw out my back, and I've been chugging ibuprofen to stay out of pain. On Tuesday, I couldn't even lift E to the changing table without screaming to wake the dead (yes, those of you on the Eastern seaboard, that's what you heard around 11:35 A.M.).

Up: I got a book in the mail about making 3D short films as a prize for the aforementioned Nicktoons short. I had no idea it was coming. Quite a nice surprise. Mind you, although I "know" some of the artists whose work is highlighted in the book, I'm not one of them. Maybe someday...

Up: In light of the recent tribulations with TiVo, I was quite pleased to discover that, thanks to the FireWire jack in the back of my cable box, I can record HDTV onto my computer. In fact, apparently back in the day that this article was written, it was only Macs that could do so. Even now, someone has written a little utility which acts like a poor man's TiVo. Down: Unfortunately, there's no commercial detection and my computer's screen isn't big enough (nor is my processor fast enough) to watch it in full 1080i resolution--and I can't figure out how to hook it up to the TV. Apparently, if my HDTV had FireWire in, I'd be all set, but wouldn't you know...

Up: However, good ol' Godfrey was kind enough to assure me that building my own PVR was a piece of cake, and even did a step-by-step photojournal (he's building an audio system, not a PVR, but that's just details). So now, I've got the mini-ITX bug and will probably wind up tearing apart an old VCR. What would be a better case for a PVR than a broken Betamax? Down: Unfortunately, funds are tight at the moment, given that we're putting an addition on our house. And yet, that motherboard is calling me.

Up: And speaking of eBay, I listed my DVD changer which I just replaced. I put it up as a $1.00 starting bid and $25 Buy it Now just for the hell of it, figuring I'd be lucky to get ten bucks. Lo and behold, in five hours it was sold to a buyer in Arkansas. Not a bad showing for my first-ever auction.

Why Does Windows Still Suck?

Pullin' a Godfrey!

Woo hoo!

I'd say more, but I have to sign an NDA.

(I hate NDAs, but at least I can talk about this once it expires...)

A happy ending.

The good news is that I was able to create a treatment and send it off. Thank goodness. I felt a million times better once that was off my shoulders.

Maybe I'm amazed.

Maybe it's because I'm tired, or sick, or stressed; but I don't feel creative, nor confident in my creative abilities right now. The story I mentioned below still isn't coming, and I almost wish I could scuttle the project entirely because of the pain and the stress it could cause. But on the other hand, if I wanted to make my own gigantic film, I'd do it in a second. Hell, I just did. So how is this different?

More later, after a nap, maybe.

Goodness me.

My story sense seems to have vanished with my cold. I've been given a commission to, in essence, make a short film, with very few "givens" that I have to put in it. Suddenly, I'm discovering the disadvantage of waiting for my Good Ideas to appear in dreams or in the shower, because at the moment, no stories are popping up unbidden, and thinking them up is Hard Work. Not only that, but stories I force myself into are always worse than stories that come unbidden from my unconscious.

But my darn unconscious just doesn't want to work for money. I can't say I blame it. I'm not sure I'm up to the task, myself--if it wasn't for Lots of Cash, I wouldn't do it at all, even given the fun it could be. I mean, how many people get paid to make short animated films?

Technology, contd.

The story ends with yours truly disovering that the new Comcast cable box which was installed actually has an HDTV decoder built right in--even though the Comcast rep told me it didn't. So I returned the external HDTV receiver, and the TiVo for good measure, and got my money back on both. So it's like this weekend never happened--except for the huge loss of time waiting on all these products I no longer have. Which, somehow, makes me feel even stupider.

Congratulations to (I think) our ten thousandth visitor. And I can't believe she keeps checking up on Rooster Spice.

Technology does not make us happier.

I have fully proved my own idiocy over a course of a few weeks. And it's all because of Costco.

K and I agreed this Christmas that we wouldn't buy any big-ticket technological items--TVs, digital cameras, and so on--because they'd most likely go into markdown free-fall after the holidays. So that was that, and our Christmas was pleasant and non-stressful.

We did, however, wind up with a plethora of DVDs. Ever since my Lasik surgery, I've found it difficult to watch movies on our 23-inch TV--the price of 20/20 vision is a halo around bright objects at night, and the TV is no exception. Plus, being the theatrical purist that I am, we never watch movies in pan & scan, only widescreen, and on a standard 4x3 television, if you watch DVDs in widescreen, you lose about 1/4 of the picture resolution. So, I've had my eyes on a proper widescreen HDTV for a while now.

In addition, our DVD/CD player has had trouble with newer CDs for a while now--it needs to "warm up" to play them. So if I wanted to listen to R.E.M.'s latest album, I have to listen to the Beatles first, and this stinks, because it always makes R.E.M. sound worse. Not only that, but our stereo receiver, though excellent, heats up enough to fry eggs. It's inside a cabinet, and this has always made me worried about fire hazards. (Someone will have to explain to me why the whisper fan in the receiver only starts up when the decibel level is approximately that of a jet plane.) And we don't have enough speakers for true Dolby Digital... you can see where this is going, right?

Enter Costco, and a Panasonic 6-channel Dolby receiver/DVD player combo for $250. I saw it, and my mouth fell open. It even came with speakers. (I'm an old-fashioned guy, and that's a big deal to me, even though my inner audiophile was screaming, "Don't trust all-in-one systems!")

Well, naturally, if we were going to have that, we had to get a new television, and ta-da, Costco had a Philips HDTV monitor for $600. Not a plasma or LCD screen, just a big ol' tube, but we have furniture for a tube, so why not? Never mind the snowstorm, get out the debit card!

(In truth, I did ask K before I dropped the dime. She said it was OK as long as I didn't get her any birthday presents, which made sense when you consider that she had been nagging me for a new TV and TiVo for a long time anyway.)

So, home I came with toys in tow (and a bad back from all that towing), put all the systems together, and settled down with the wife to watch Return of the King in its full glory. It was worth it.

Ah, but the horror story doesn't end there. It hasn't been all that horrific yet, after all.

We had spent nearly our entire marriage without cable television. It made sense, since we never watched much television anyway (though plenty of movies, as mentioned). We finally got it six months ago, but only to get the cable internet, because we wanted to discontinue our land-line phone service and switch to Voice over IP (let me know if you want it and I'll refer you!). It had always been my intention to get the extreme basic cable only, which gives us a discount on the cable internet. But there was a special offer on full digital cable, so we went for that, expecting to downgrade when the special offer expired.

Downgrade? But we have this new TV now...! And there was K, asking again and again every day about HDTV and TiVo...!

The nail in the coffin was yesterday, when the HDTV flyer from Comcast arrived ("Get HDTV for the Big Game!") and a material effector of insanity enveloped our house. Never mind that our TV didn't have a built in HDTV tuner and we'd have to buy a set-top box. Never mind that once we bought a box, we could get HDTV over-the-air for free. Comcast was offering HDTV for only $2.50 more per month! Ka-ching! One phone call and we had HDTV--but no way to decode it. Off I went to Circuit City, to buy a Motorola HDTV decoder for $250--about what they were selling for on eBay once you figured in shipping and handling. While I was there I picked up a TiVo box because, well, what the hell?

Oh, did I mention that Circuit City had just done inventory, and they couldn't actually, um, find the HDTV tuner in the back because things were so messed up? So, I had spent $250 for an illusion. They said I could pick it up the following day (today). Well, I still had the TiVo to make K happy. I left the store feeling like a Cro-Magnon who had just killed dinner, and was dragging it home triumphantly. My spirits were somewhat dampened when I realized that, though I can play Dolby Digital DVDs, I wouldn't be able to listen to HDTV in Dolby Digital, because my new all-in-one Panasonic doesn't, um, have digital audio inputs. Why would it need it, if it's all-in-one, dude?

Oh, well. On to TiVo and the glory of digital video without commercials! Now, TiVo requires a connection to a phone line for its intial set-up, after which you can hook it up to your wireless network and do all the magic, and of course you have to pay a monthly fee. Fair enough. I followed the instructions to the letter. Hooked it up. Turned it on. Waited.

Turns out you can't hook TiVo up through a Voice over IP phone line--the resolution isn't good enough for a modem. So I couldn't do the initial set-up, and I have to find some friend, anywhere, who is willing to have me tie up their phone line for several hours to do the intial set-up and download the software update. Oh, and did I mention that TiVo doesn't work with the most advanced wireless protocol, 802.11g? Which is what our home network has. So I essentially can't use TiVo at all, now that I've opened the box.

So, to review, I've got cable that I don't watch, HDTV that I can't watch, a TiVo that I can't use, and a Dolby Digital stereo system that doesn't play Dolby Digital for everything. And somehow, I know, this will not cure my penchant for impulse buying.

Just wait 'til I try to get a digital single-lens-reflex camera...

I'm knocking on heaven's dooOH HOLY CRAP!

That is all.

Edit: that's not quite all. HOLY HOLY CRAP!!!

Anonymity also sucks.

I'm sick of having 3, count 'em 3, readers. Is it time to publicize Rooster Spice again? Thoughts welcome.

Edit: Make that 4. Hi, Mom.

Aaaand... we're BACK!

Parenthood sucks.

There's just no way around it--parenthood sucks.

I mean, what the hell are you supposed to do with a kicking, screaming little girl? Drop her off at nursery school? Hit her? Scream at her?

I don't have the tools. The skill set. Whatever you want to call it.

I am a hopeless failure as a parent. The simplest of tasks--take daughter to nursery school, drop her off. I wind up yelling, screaming, bruised and battered. At least, I suppose, I was the one who wound up bruised, and not her. That's the one saving grace. And after she kicked me in the teeth with her huge winter boots, I almost hit her.

But really, if the screaming and yelling isn't in itself abuse, what is? Therefore, I am an abusive parent. Therefore, I am not fit to be a parent. Therefore, I am not fit to live.

I took her home. She stopped kicking and screaming. I informed her that if she wasn't going to nursery school, she would stay in bed all morning. And so, she is lying in bed in a darkened room, and isn't that a form of abuse as well? What's the difference between putting a child in bed and locking her in a closet?

World's Greatest Footnote.

"[2] Do not eat iPod Shuffle."

Flame off, please.

My favorite 3D forum has taken a turn for the worse. The moderators put up a new sub-forum called "Rants and Raves," as a place for people to vent about their frustrations. After 48 hours, any given thread disappears.

This is the only saving grace.

Meanwhile, somehow, evolutionists and creationists have gotten into arguments, and no one is bothering with 3D. People who shared constructive criticism are now bitter and angry at each other. Expletives have been shot in each direction.

Can't we leave that shit to Fark?

Mood: resentful.

I quit piano lessons about six months ago because every time I tried to practice, the kids would bang on the keys, stick their heads under my arms, and generally make me miserable.

This evening, at K's request, I tried to practice again, and naturally nothing had changed, so after my Duke Ellington songbook had crashed to the floor at the hands of my daughter, I went upstairs in a huff to fold laundry. Whereupon I heard K get through the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, among other things, without interruption.

What's the deal with that?

Pffft.

Bored now. (Followed by my main character's skin being pulled off.)

GAAAAH! Good Fortune Alert!

In today's email:

Dear Mr [Squelch],

Congratulations.

The co-producing team of Frederator Studios and Animation Magazine is happy to inform you that <ESC> has been selected to appear in the sixth episode of the Nicktoons Film Festival, airing on Nicktoons Sunday, November 28th, at 10:00pm (ET) / 7:00pm (PT).

Encore presentations include:
Monday, 11/29, at 1:00am (ET)
Monday, 11/29, at 10:00pm (ET)
Tuesday, 11/30, at 1:00am (ET)

If you have any questions please be sure to e-mail us at Hey@Frederator.kz or NicktoonsFilmFestival@AnimationMagazine.net. Also note that a representative from our production office may contact you for marketing purposes.

Once again, thank you for your submission and welcome to our show.

Sincerely,

Rita Street, Producer
Eric Homan, Producer
Nicktoons Film Festival

The movie in question. And to think I only got cable a month ago! Okay, who's gonna be in D.C. on the 28th? Party time!

Contract imminent.

My novel is now listed at Na-No-Blog-Mo, so I guess I can start seeing those hits roll in, huh? Plbt...

I'm never going to make the deadline, but it sure is fun. That's exactly what I said each time I tried this before... just before I was sent into a death spiral.

The folly continues.

Chapter Two is up. As with most of my writings, at the moment I think it's pretty good. In a few days, I will think it sucks, get depressed about it, and burn it in the fireplace (metaphorically speaking, these days).

Well.

If you're a Rooster Spice reader who can't get enough, why not try my woefully underwritten NaNoWriMo novel?

Skeleton in the E-Closet: A Mystery of Low-Paying Summer Theater

Future chapters coming apace!

God damn it.

Aftermath.

At least I can look myself in the face. But next time around, I'll be sure to not spend so much time in the echo chamber.

It's tough to overstate how invested I was in this election. I spent money, I all but abandoned my family, I wailed and gnashed my teeth. I also really believed in John Kerry as something other than an Anything-But-Bush. He's probably going to get a lot of blame for this, but the fact is, he is a good man and a good politician. I'll stand by that statement for the foreseeable future.

Who knew that Bush and Rove could win by only going after their base and arresting those who disagreed with them? Everyone but me, apparently.

It's going to take a while for me to recover. But who cares what I think? Bush certainly doesn't.

Woo hoo!

Here I am at the Kerry-Edwards headquarters for Northeast Philly. Just hoofed through two neighborhoods, hanging literature in the first and canvassing voters in the second. Only one Bush voter swore at me, apparently because he thought I had knocked down his signs. I hadn't.

Lots of friendly faces, though. And far more Kerry signs than the other.

I've not been able to reach my wife at home, so, if she's reading this: I love you, K! Have you voted yet?

I'm off to the races.

Goin' to Philadephia to get out the vote. If any readers are in the area, you'll know me; I'll be wearing a pink carnation.

For what it's worth, my prediction: Kerry's going to break 300.

The Canvass.

I guess I should write about how it went before I forget it all.

I got up at 5:30 so I could get my wife to drive me to D.C., where the buses waited, by 7. We had to take the kids, too, but for once, they were happy to be awake so early. (The kids, that is. I doubt my wife was, but bless her heart, she didn't show it.)

Crammed like sardines into a motor coach. The bus' radio was set to a local Christian music station. On a Democratic bus! Congnitive dissonance! Aren't we supposed to be the atheist communists? I read a little bit of Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command to remind me of one reason I was there, and then slept most of the way and woke up in... Harrisburg, Pennsylvania! Swing state country! (It was somewhat depressing, I admit, to look out the window the few times I was awake, because I invariably saw Bush/Cheney signs, but as we got closer, a few Kerry/Edwards signs began appearing as well.)

The state Democratic headquarters was heartwarming. Signs everywhere, for both national and local candidates. Plenty of doughnuts to go around. And I thought we were packed like sardines in the bus...

We got a nice lecture/pep talk about canvassing; they explained that they were moving from persuasion of undecideds to energizing the base and getting out the vote (GOTV), which worked for me; I'm not much of a persuader (or so I thought). Then we broke into groups of two and three and were assigned a block of Harrisburg and dropped off to work a list of registered Democrats.

I was with Rama, a biochemist from Laurel, and Karen, a woman who had last worked on a political campaign in Michigan for McGovern. (I explained that I hadn't been able to volunteer in '72 because I was too busy being born.) We walked down a street in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. They had been canvassed before, and not by the Republicans, based on the number of Kerry-Edwards signs we already saw. For the most part, those folks who were home were very polite, considering all the politcal crap they must have been hearing. But in one case, Rama and I (who were working the right side of the street while Karen took the left) actually met a bona fide undecided voter!

Her husband was a clear Kerry supporter (he asked us for three window signs, and stapled one to a two-by-four to improvise a lawn sign while we were there), but he had forgotten to register to vote, so our household vote came down to his wife. She didn't like Bush, but she wasn't sure about Kerry--seemed to have internalized the whole flip-flop meme. So Rama and I tried a little reasoning. What sealed the deal, though, was when she asked whether Teresa Heinz Kerry really gave money to extreme causes, as has been alleged in various chain e-mails. As it happened, I had just read about this, and was able to debunk it in some detail. That seemed to impress her. I think we may have given Kerry one more vote in Pennsylvania (worth about 300 votes in New Jersey).

At 3 PM, we elected to attend a rally with Elizabeth Edwards who was just wonderful, answering every question from the audience with aplomb. My favorite question came from someone who looked like a college student, and asked, "We have been bombarded with television advertising telling us that John Kerry is a 'liberal,' and that's it dangerous to have a 'liberal' in charge of America. Could you please explain to me: what is a 'liberal' and why is it bad to have one as President?" Mrs. Edwards made a pretty good case that George W. Bush is a liberal, actually.

After the rally, we headed to the bus (I took a wrong turn trying to get back, and was chewed out by a police officer, which saddened me) and back to D.C. I was home by eight-thirty. I wish I could do it again next weekend--but I am definitely doing it on Election Day.

I'm off to canvass for votes. Wish me luck.

The end thymes.

I don't know if I'm doing NaNoWriMo this year, but if I do, I already have the first line of my novel:

Every morning I wake up and put the United States back together.

This is somewhat related to something I've wanted to blog about for a while, because I recently asked a friend whether he was going to spend November scribbling bad prose (we've both tried since 2002 and neither one of us finished). He, too, said he wasn't sure, but if he did write one, it would be "set forty years after the reelection of George W. Bush." (And just so we're clear on his intentions, he added, "the trick would be not making it exactly like The Handmaid's Tale.)

Add that to David Neiwert's excellent series on the creeping pseudo-fascism of the right wing, and, more personally, something I can't really write about which brings home (into my family, in fact) the issue of self-defense against the government, and I'm really starting to wonder whether folks like me, who are passionate about electing John Kerry, but not yet willing to entertain the speculation that, say, the Bush administration would simply not accept the outcome of an election, are kidding ourselves.

Consider the suppression of dissent at Bush rallies. It's been well-documented that hecklers are tolerated at Kerry rallies, and removed (or even arrested) at Bush events. Most recently and egregiously, three women were ejected for wearing T-shirts with an allegedly "obscene" message: "Protect our Civil Liberties."

Then there's the well-documented, but inexplicably ignored by the major media, case of Nathan Sproul and Associates, who have been going from state to state, paid for directly by the Republican National Committee. They have been posing as a non-partisan voter registration organization, but they have been refusing to register Democrats, and in at least one known case, actively throwing away Democratic registration forms. Make no mistake, this is not some fringe outfit; their own employment ads say that they're funded by the RNC.

And of course you have major right-wing figures asserting that torture is akin to fraternity pranks, and that indefinite detention of American citizens isn't worrisome. There are even reports of wholesale murder of civilians in Iraq, to puff up body counts of "insurgents." Even as I write this I worry that I sound like a "paranoid lefty."

When does paranoia become intelligence?

I hope that Kerry can pull out an electoral vote landslide. I am becoming more convinced by the day that unless he does, the right-wing machine will simply pick itself up and start moving inexorably back to power. We need a strong rebuke to these kind of policies, that look reality in the face and say "We make our own reality." We cannot allow the people who demand power for its own sake--not power to help people, not power as a responsibility, not even power for policy--to continue running this country.

I'll be traveling this weekend to knock on doors in a swing state, doing my small part. I hope it's enough.

Holy fucking shit.

The instant (but scientific) poll from ABC news has:

Kerry Won -- 42%
Bush Won -- 41%

But look at the party breakdown:

Republicans -- 38%
Democrats -- 30%

I think that translates into a Kerry win--big time.

Triumph of the Will...

Thousands of Nevada Dem Voter Registrations Destroyed by Repugs

(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone�who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats.�Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America�only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters.� It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.
...
The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee.�Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.�

"I love democracy." -- Chancellor Palpatine, Attack of the Clones

"The Night George W. Bush Ordered a Thug to Tell Me to 'Get the Fuck Out of Here!' "

Read this. The whole thing.

It may or may not be true, I admit. But it is hellishly frightening.

Christopher Reeve

I can't honestly say why his death affects me as much as it does. When I found out--and it may be the first time I've learned about a death from a blog--I found myself crying.

Some of it, I'm sure, is childhood memory. I was as big a fan of the Superman movies as anyone. And looking back, let's be honest--could there have been a better Superman, ever? He was a relative unknown, sure, which allowed us to project whatever we wanted onto him, but with that chiseled, square jaw and massive chest, Reeve was Superman, and with the glasses on, he was Clark Kent.

But obviously, if it hadn't been for his accident, and his tireless advocacy of scientific and medical research since then, he would be known as just another actor, most likely, and I doubt I'd be crying.

From what I understand, Reeve was seen, to some in the parapalegic community, as setting back the cause, because he wasn't working for rights for the handicapped and wasn't accepting that he would no longer walk again (at least, that's the impression I got from the admittedly few times I worked with VSA). I can understand that. But to the folks, like me, who were lucky enough to not be handicapped... well, he made us believe a man could fly, and then he made us believe a man could walk.

"Well, I just have to start with a challenge to the President. Sir, I have seen your train go by... and I think I can beat it."

-- Christopher Reeve, Democratic National Convention, 1996

Who cares?

I give it to Kerry, for what it's worth. But not nearly the blow-out of the first debate. I thought Bush was all too often condescending and hectoring, especially at the beginning. Kerry seemed to be down to earth and human. I doubt his stuttering at the end will be widely reported, because it doesn't fit into the Storyline (Bush stumbles over words, not Kerry).

But I'm just some guy, after all.

Terrorists Terrorists Terrorists!

I'm George W. Bush, and I approve this message.

Whew!

I was just making some canvassing calls--boy is that ever draining and exhilarating at the same time. (I'm also glad I now get free long distance with my phone company.) The most memorable was a nice long conversation with a couple of Ohio seniors; I could barely get my pitch in, they were so eager to tell me why Bush needs to be defeated. I agreed with them (though I am a little leery of the whole 1930s Germany comparison), but in any case they couldn't help with the volunteer effort.

But I know who can. So why aren't YOU calling? Or if you live in a swing state, why aren't you canvassing?

Are you a reporter? Then REPORT!

Straight from CNN via Atrios:

PHILLIPS: So, do Americans agree with Kerry's statement during his debate that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks and not Saddam Hussein?

Agree with Kerry's statement?

What the hell kind of question is that? Kerry's statement? It's a freakin' fact!

"The Bush administration today stated that black is white. Some Democrats still claim that black is black, however."

Impression #1.

All right, I have to get this written before my weak-willed thoughts are subsumed by the wall of spin and opinion no doubt bearing on me: the VP debate was a tie, IMHO. In my wife's opinion, Cheney won. We're both die-hard Kerry-Edwards supporters, by the way (as if you didn't know!).

Or are they Michael-Powellisms now?

This has been the problem all along in Kerry failing to run on his record in the Senate - he was a motherfucking statesman, a real one, who grappled with real issues, for years. He didn't go from 'Nam to presidential candidate. Kerry's own words are the clearest rejoinder to charges that he has lacked clear positions on Iraq. Kerry was a hawk, but a responsible hawk. He was not an appeaser. He was not beholden to his party. He just decided back then, and to this day, that we shouldn't dis the rest of the world, and we shouldn't, fer chrissake, run into this thing like a Peoria drag queen at make-up close-out day at the JC Penney's in the mall.

I might have said it with fewer Cheneyisms, but still, Rude Pundit got it right, I think, don't you?

Dear Lord.

Why hasn't this been covered in the United States?

Maher's Story in Brief

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old wireless technology consultant. Arar was born in Syria and at the age of 17, came to Canada with his family. He became a Canadian citizen in 1991 and in 1997 moved to Ottawa.

In September 2002, Arar was in Tunisia, vacationing with his wife Monia Mazigh and their two small children. On Sept. 26 while in transit in New York�s JFK airport, he was detained by US officials and interrogated about alleged links to al-Qaeda. Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Jordan aboard a private plane and from there transferred to a Syrian prison.

In Syria, he was held in a tiny �grave-like� cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. He was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.

During his imprisonment, Monia campaigned relentlessly on his behalf. After many representations from Canadian Human Rights organizations and a growing number of citizens, the Government of Canada, on Jan. 28, 2004, announced a Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar.

Well, at least we have a suitable Republican response to the recent talk about outsourcing torture: Blame Canada.

Well, duh.

Paul Krugman, the New York Times:

These days, Mr. Bush and other administration officials often talk about the 10.5 million Afghans who have registered to vote in this month's election, citing the figure as proof that democracy is making strides after all. They count on the public not to know, and on reporters not to mention, that the number of people registered considerably exceeds all estimates of the eligible population. What they call evidence of democracy on the march is actually evidence of large-scale electoral fraud.

Well, yeah. But according to the Bushes, large-scale electoral fraud is democracy on the march. Isn't it?

Is anyone reading this?

An open letter to my friends who support Kerry:

There's been a lot of talk about how Bush is ahead in the polls in key states, and how Kerry needs a minor miracle (or a major one) to pull this out. Now, this could all change with tonight's debate. But I'm starting to get a sense, here in D.C., that the conventional wisdom is that the race is over.

If you don't want that to happen--if you believe, as I do, that a second W. administration would spell disaster for the country, both now and in the future--or even if you believe simply that he's done a poor job and Kerry would do better--put your money where your mouth is.

And I'm not talking about contributions, though that would be nice. I'm talking about volunteering. There's a way to do it no matter where you are. If you live in a swing state, sign up to go door-to-door. If you don't, sign up to make recruitment calls (I did this, and it's really quite painless), or travel to a swing state (I will be doing this, if I can help it).

It goes without saying that we can't give up now. What doesn't go without saying, but should, is that it's up to us. Dean taught me that, when most of his contributions came from people like me. He didn't get the nomination, but he changed the way I think about politics.

I will not stand by, I told myself once the primaries were over. W. may well steal the election, he may even win outright, but I promise myself this: I will be able to look myself in the mirror and say, "I did not let this happen; I worked so this wouldn't happen; and no one can ever say I didn't."

Don't you owe yourself the same promise?

One explanation.

Godfrey asked, "As if Frances wasn't bad enough, there's a new one, Ivan, that has a good chance of developing into yet another Category 4 hurricane. Was it something we said?" Well, no, it was something you did.

Seriously, best of luck to all our friends and relatives in Florida.

What's on my mind? Three guesses.

Greenbelt has a festival every Labor Day weekend, and we went to the first day's festivities. It was really heartening to see the sheer number of Kerry/Edwards buttons on people's shirts (the local Democratic club was giving them away). I signed up for a yard sign, though (as my wife remarked) living as we do at the end of a parking lot, not many people will be looking at our yard. Still haven't decided whether I'm going to Man The Phone Banks, as an email I recieved asked me to do. I probably will.

Oh, and there were rides and funnel cakes, too.

Cheers, or boos?

To this listener's ears, it sounds like both (maybe a few yahoos booing in the back, but the vast majority of the audience was cheering).

Doesn't change what I think of Bush.

Confessions of a centrist liberal.

I really should be watching the convention. Am I a bad person because I value sleep more than a speech by Dick Cheney?

Ah, well, we can't do anything, anyway... they control the voting machines.

I'll mention that to Pepco.

An excellent essay by Godfrey in the comments of his blog:

I'm fascinated by the shift in the meaning of "conservatism" since [Sen. Barry] Goldwater's time.

Today, Goldwater (whose nickname was "Mr. Conservative") would be seen as too liberal to run for President as a GOP candidate, because he was a staunch supporter of abortion, civil rights, and gay rights � but in his day, the Republican party ("the party of Lincoln") was a stronger supporter of civil rights than the Democrats. (This changed when the GOP altered its character in order to convert the solidly Democratic South; in politics, principles always seem to take a back seat to the ambition for power.)

Ironically, the direction the government has taken during the present administration � larger government, increased spending (indeed, the conversion of the country's largest budget surplus into its largest deficit), reduction of privacy, increased government scrutiny of its own citizens, legislative dismantling of the three-branch system of checks and balances, banning scientific research into certain areas, attacks on civil and gay rights � once upon a time, these were things Conservatives railed against Liberals for doing.

So it's just interesting to me that Goldwater was liberal by today's standards, and the Republican party is liberal by the standards of just a few decades ago.

It's also a little ironic that some of the things he warned about in his acceptance speech, which he claimed could be prevented by a Republican President and a Republican Congress, are coming to pass at the hands of the Republicans.

You could probably power Washington by wrapping his body in copper wire and putting magnets around his grave.

I cried.

This article in the Washington Post Magazine, a rare serious turn from one of D.C.'s best humorists, is a must-read. Don't ask me why, just read it.

Our VCR only tapes in black and white.

Tomorrow morning the political blogosphere will be all atwitter about John Kerry's appearance on The Daily Show; and for the first time ever, I can Join In The Twitter, because I have cable! I finally feel like one of the cool kids!

Of course, I still can't stay up past 10:00 these days, so I'll be videotaping it. But it's the principle of the thing.

Alert!

My email address has changed. If you know me personally and didn't get my recent adress-change note, leave a message in the comments and I'll send it to you.

Kicking and screaming.

I'm finally getting dragged into the 21st century... and all at once, no less.

First of all, we have cable TV now, which I suppose is more 20th century than 21st, but we only got it so we could get cable-based Internet, which is definitely 21st century. Since getting it (about a week ago), we have watched exactly zero non-network channels. We're not much of a TV family. I expect that will change during the Evildoers Republican National Convention, when I'll discover the wonders of C-SPAN.

Second of all, we're killing our traditional phone service in favor of a voice-over-IP scheme from Vonage. Getting cable and Vonage turned out to be considerably cheaper than DSL and local/long distance on a land line. By the way, if anyone wants to switch to Vonage, let me know, because I'll be happy to refer you so both you and I will get a free month of service.

(The unfortunate part of all this is that our cable Internet isn't working yet; there's some kind of fault at the cable box that serves our townhome. Comcast is working on it, and I hope they solve it soon, because we're due to lose our traditional phone service in 20 days--and since that means no DSL as well, that means no IP-phone, no email, no contact with the outside world at all, in fact, short of snail-mail.)

Third of all, I'm blogging from my dining-room table. Yes, I finally succumbed and bought a wireless router (Mike, WiFi evangelist extraordinaire, is no doubt chanting "One of us... one of us..."), which I suppose isn't that big a deal among the technically elite, but considering that it was the wife who was demanding it (and who unlike me doesn't have a waptop*), it's significant, if only for its utter frivolity. As I alluded above, I live in a townhouse. According to my computer, my unit is now within three hotspots--all of them password-protected. Ah well...

So there it is, my Week o' Technology. Yet, I still don't own a cell phone...

*waptop: This was a typo, but it occurs to me it's a pretty good neologism for "Wi-Fi laptop," don'tcha think?

I didn't go to Portland, but I did participate in my first-ever Fark photoshop.

Original here; my contribution here.

A poll.

So: should I go to Portland, to celebrate my first-ever acceptance to a film festival? Bearing in mind that I'm on the East Coast.

(It wasn't just me who was accepted, of course, but my whole team; but I'll leave it up to them to get their own tickets.)

Comments are welcome, in the...um... comments.

[Edit: if for some reason the link above itsn't showing in your browser, copy and paste this:

http://tinyurl.com/62h2d

Safari isn't showing the link, and I can't figure out why.]

Film critic.

Looks like Laura saw the same movie I did:

What The Heck. The new Manchurian Candidate is to the original Manchurian Candidate what the Manfred Mann "Quinn the Eskimo" is to Bob's original "Quinn the Eskimo." Bad, bad, bad. Ending "new twist" was stupid and didn't make sense. Nothing made sense. Not to mention that saying a guy's full name (?!) is about seventy-thousand times less cool than suggesting he pass the time by playing a little solitaire.

I, too, was most seriously displeased, to quote Lady Catherine de Burgh. I thought Liev Schrieber was quite good, and Meryl Streep and Denzel put in their usual solid performances. But they tried to hard to Update the story that they fouled it up beyond belief.

I'm a huge fan of the original film, and read the book for the first time about a week ago (floored me! They don't write political thrillers like that anymore). I knew the new one wouldn't be as good; I didn't expect it to be as bad as it was, though.

And, my goodness! Ray.

I don't know if it was that Ray Charles died so recently, or that my father loved Georgia on my Mind, or that I can't help but dance when I hear What'd I Say or Hit the Road, Jack. But as soon as I realized I was watching a trailer for a Ray Charles biopic, I started crying. Bawling. Tears of joy, of course, but it was embarrassing. That single trailer was worth more than ten Manchurian Candidates. That movie's gonna make Jamie Foxx a star.

Targeting teens.

This may be the best public service announcement I've ever seen. It ran as a preview in Florida movie theaters, so some of you may have seen it, but I hadn't. Take a look.

Mr. Bush, tear down this wall!

I am sick and tired of living in (well, OK, near) a walled-in, medieval city. There has to be a way to protect people's safety without destroying D.C.'s vitality and liberty, without (as Tom Toles puts it today) making a Jersey barrier into the Terrorism Monument.

Of course, I haven't seen the evidence with my own eyes; I've only read about it in the Post. So this afternoon, I'm taking the law into my own hands. That is to say, I'm taking the camera to D.C., and documenting the state of affairs around buildings which, after all, I own, as an American citizen. I hope I get arrested, being the dangerous father-of-two that I am (D and E will be in tow; I have no choice).

Frankly, I think Al Qaeda is too smart. If they find their primary target is too well guarded, then they'll move to their secondary target. The only way to truly be safe is to garrison the entire city, and I fear that's the direction in which we're headed.

The Sponge Bob Cometh.

After nine years of resistance, our household is finally getting basic cable. For so long, we were able to laugh at the people who couldn't live without their CNN or Sci-Fi Channel or ESPN2. For so long, we were able to say "we get TV for free, the way it oughtta be!" But now... we are just another affluent American family, and I fully expect that soon enough we'll get a second car, probably a Hummer with a DVD player installed.

Oh, well; at least I'll be able to watch the Republican convention coverage gavel-to-gavel. Maybe if I'm lucky, there'll be another Pat-Buchanan-in-1992 moment, which will inspire me to throw a boot into the TV set again. (I will never forget screaming You fucking bigot! at the screen that summer when he made a homophobic comment. Though there isn't as much Kulturkampf this year, maybe I'll get lucky.)

We made the switch (to cable) purely for the Internet. If we kill the DSL and get voice-over-IP from Vonage, we save a hella lot of money. And if Comcast's numbers are accurate, our upload speed will double and our download speed will more than triple.

It's nice to confuse people though: "We're getting cable so our phone bills will go down." Try it at home!

Snerk!

Courtesy Campaign Desk:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

-- President George W. Bush.

The women in my life.

Two years ago, in a blaze of pain which accompanied a not-quite-strong-enough epidural, my daughter was born. Happy birthday, E, and congratulations to K, the amazing woman who carried her. I promise you'll never have to go through that pain again.

I'm out of town 'til next Wednesday, like it matters.

WOO HOO!

I'd say more, but I won't, even though I didn't sign an NDA. Yuk yuk yuk!

I seem to have misplaced my talent. It's a somewhat weather-beaten, bogged down kind of thing. If anyone sees it, please let me know, because the poor thing is too weak to survive on its own.

Wiggle room.

Here follows Article Twenty of the Amendments to the United States Constitution:

Section 1. The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

Section. 2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

Section. 3. If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

Section. 4. The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Section. 5. Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

Section. 6. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

"... the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified."

I'm no Constitutional scholar, but it seems there's a lot of wiggle room in that clause.

Un-American.

Election Day Worries

I first learned about this from Medley, but then it was only a comment from Scott McClellan (although a hellishly scary implication nonetheless). I speak, of course, of the possibility that the November elections may be "postponed." And of course, you postpone them once, you can postpone them again and again...

They're actually seeking legal ways to do this. Going to Congress to get legislation to allow elections to be postponed. They must be stopped.

I told K, "If Bush cancels the elections we're moving to Canada."

"No, we're not," she replied. "We're fighting in the civil war which would result."

From the article:

As a result, sources tell NEWSWEEK, Ridge's department last week asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place. Justice was specifically asked to review a recent letter to Ridge from DeForest B. Soaries Jr., chairman of the newly created U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Soaries noted that, while a primary election in New York on September 11, 2001, was quickly suspended by that state's Board of Elections after the attacks that morning, "the federal government has no agency that has the statutory authority to cancel and reschedule a federal election." Soaries, a Bush appointee who two years ago was an unsuccessful GOP candidate for Congress, wants Ridge to seek emergency legislation from Congress empowering his agency to make such a call. Homeland officials say that as drastic as such proposals sound, they are taking them seriously�along with other possible contingency plans in the event of an election-eve or Election Day attack. "We are reviewing the issue to determine what steps need to be taken to secure the election," says Brian Roehrkasse, a Homeland spokesman.

"... what steps need to be taken to secure the election." That's a nice Orwellian phrase, isn't it?

It's been confirmed by NPR (at least) because that's where we heard it this afternoon. I hope other news organizations pay attention.

Woot!

Kerry/Edwards. About time.

Stunned.

Just got a rare night out with K to see Fahrenheit 9/11. I hope that by tomorrow I'll have something coherent to say about it, but right now all I can do is cry and/or scream.

Make a film in ten seconds? What?

The Ten Second Film Festival

Apparently this is one of a few enterprises which are creating content for digital phones.

I don't have a cell phone, myself. But is this a service that people would actually pay for?

I don't know... the licensing is fairly unrestrictive, so I might well submit films. But most of the people I know who have digital phones use them as... phones. Somehow it seems like the mp3.com disease is spreading to video--that is, tons and tons of artists and very little market.

ARGH!

I've got an Exalted Position at the ol'

Oh, fuck this.

I feel better after saying that.

Late for America.

What do you call a political activist who shows up late for rallies?

I'm sorry, I don't have the answer to this riddle, unless it's "Squelch."*

Since voter verification is very dear to my heart, I decided to drag D and E to a rally for passage of the House bill to mandate it; it was today at noon in front of a House office building. We took the Metro, of course, because D's nuts about it, and since it was noon, I packed bag lunches for all of us, which I thought was a very progressive thing to do, even if one of the lunches was a meat sandwich.

Between trying to find a parking spot at the station, and then disembarking at Union Station instead of Capitol South (I thought it would be a nice walk, which it was, and also faster, which it wasn't), we got there forty-five minutes late. It was still going on, though. Then D informed me that he needed to use the potty, and when a four year old says that, you jump. So, off to find the stroller-accessible entrance, through the security, into the bathroom and the washing of hands, out again, and ta-da! the rally was over. We didn't even arrive in time to see Medley's spirit.

Just as well, really, as by that point the kids were so tired and hungry that even extremely entertaining oratory wouldn't have kept them from crying--D was actually just sitting whenever we stopped walking. So I found us a picnic table in a shady spot and we had lunch, then back home via the Metro we went, slightly more politically aware--or at least, more scheduling aware.

*Actual political activism not included.

A link between the U.S. and chemical weapons? Invade ourselves!

K's mother sent us this editorial by Paul Krugman, which I'm rather surprised hasn't hit the blogosphere (or at least the tiny slice which I read) yet:

In April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon � a cyanide bomb � big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.

... it sounds over the top to accuse Mr. Ashcroft of trying to bury news about terrorists who don't fit his preferred story line. Yet it's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he praised "Southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist?

Read the whole thing.

News flash.

I feel left out and underappreciated. Yeah, I know, what else is new?

Sniff, sniff.

I'm not quite sure this passes the smell test, but as they say, it's "important, if true":

The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.

"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and�wouldn't hear of it," says an aide.�"That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."

Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."

God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration�s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft �the Blues Brothers� because �they�re on a mission from God.�

�The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,� says one aide. �They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.�

But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them �fucking assholes� in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him �unpatriotic� or �anti-American.�

�The mood here is that we�re under siege, there�s no doubt about it,� says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. �In this administration, you don�t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.�

I can't picture George W. Bush putting the words "I cannot abide disloyalty" together. That's just not the way he talks. Plus, the reliance on anonymous sources puts a nasty, David Brock-esque taint on the whole thing. Still, it's pretty juicy, ain't it?

(Never mind that other headline on the Web page: Prominent DC Shrink Diagnoses Bush to be a Paranoid, Sadistic Meglomaniac.)

Sigh.

When even a professionally written (and edited, dammit!) blog can fuck up the "it's" vs. "its" construction, is there any hope for the rest of us?

That, and it's wreaked havoc with my user interface habits.

Well, I had considered myself far too sophisticated for video games (except vintage ones, of course) and then I downloaded the Call of Duty demo for Mac. I surrender, and I ain't talking at the hands of the Germans, but at the hands of Activision and Aspyr. Who knew death and carnage could be so addictive?

Me being me, of course, I always wonder whether the Nazi officer I just shot had a family back home that loved him and waited for his safe return.

Still, looking at this game plus some of the on-line previews, I have to admit I've haven't given game animation a chance; I had always said to myself that I'd sooner starve than animate for video games. But if you look at this set of clips from the Stalingrad scenario (warning, huge download and non-standard codecs, but worth it), you have to ask yourself: sure, it's low-polygon, but is it not movie quality? Some of the Infocom games (and their descendants) proved there was such a thing as interactive fiction; could it be that the long awaited "interactive cinema" is already here?

"U.S. Acres I think is an abomination." -- Bill Watterson.

Since two of my favorite blogs have already linked to the Slate article about Garfield, the Movie, I figured I'd have to go my own way...

A dimension of mind.

I was once haranguing a friend. He listened to me describe my despondence regarding the inability to write, and my deep resentment of those who seemed to have success handed to them wherever they were. I went on and on, angry and bitter, and finally concluded, �But it�s all my own fault, of course; the problem is me, and that I don�t feel passionate about anything enough!�

�Really?� he said, archly. �You seem pretty passionate about this!�

He went on to explain that since I clearly had a lot of energy and so forth regarding this topic that perhaps I should think about channeling that energy into creative work, somehow.

Now, of course, I�ve decided that I�m just not a writer, so it doesn�t matter anyway, and I should be thankful that I don�t have those problems to worry about anymore.

But it doesn�t work that way, does it?

We went to the city pool yesterday. I don�t swim, so I grabbed my PowerBook, took up residence at a picnic table, and began writing an article about a high school teacher who also happens to be an alumnus of my college. It was in my head because of my ten-year college reunion, which was also his fiftieth. I was going to attend but I was sure he wasn�t. Naturally, I missed it, and I found out that he not only attended, but delivered a talk.

In any case, I thought an article about him, and about my failed, last-minute attempt to visit the campus and catch him, would make good reading, and maybe something which the alumni magazine would publish. So, I started writing.

The news wasn�t that I failed. The news was that I succeeded. Well, I succeeded in at least the first few paragraphs, and then suddenly it was time to leave. I was dumbfounded. I was writing again! Not only that, but I was writing at a picnic table with distractions all around me. I had gotten into the closed-off zone of a working writer, where nothing matters but the words on the page. I hadn�t been there since 1999. The furniture was a little dusty, but the inhabitants welcomed me.

Of course, they reminded me that I had, in fact, only written a few paragraphs, and they needed serious revision (which was always my weak point). But the journey was significant.

If I had to guess, I�d say there were three factors that allowed me to jump into the Writing Zone, however briefly. First of all, time: a block of time in which I had nothing to do but the will to write. Second of all, company: There wasn�t any. I was for all intents and purposes alone�no kids to look after, no wife to feel guilty about abandoning. Third, and maybe most important, place: I wasn�t at home, where chores and other distractions overwhelm me. I finally understood why so many writers choose to work in diners. They aren�t technically alone, but in essence it�s just them and their coffee.

So where does that leave me? Either I need to force a block of time in my life (if I want to write), or I need to wait until both my kids are in school, and walk down to the New Deal Caf� with my laptop on a regular basis.

Then I just have to hope they don�t have Wi-Fi, because we all know what the ultimate distraction is.

Euphemisms.

All right, I get incensed about silly things. But what the fuck, really: am I stupid, or is "form factor" a snotty, high-tech way to say "shape"?

Newses.

Whew! What a week to take a vacation, huh?

Naturally, we had told our neighbor, who was collecting our mail, that she was free to recycle the newspapers as they came in. After all, no one reads yesterday's papers, right?

Unless, of course, Reagan dies and there's a state funeral in your hometown, and your local paper breaks the story of White House memos which virtually legalize torture...

Ah well. At least we listened to NPR a lot.

Sayonara!

I'm on vacation 'til Friday June 11, visiting Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine (though not, alas, Colby), and Connecticut. If you need to reach me, please contact the liar.

Pants aflame.

Read this and combat the lies.

There was only one liar in the 2000 election, and it wasn't Al Gore. Now he's doing it again.

Last Monday in Little Rock, Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry "has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all" and said the senator from Massachusetts "promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."

On Tuesday, President Bush's campaign began airing an ad saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.

The same day, the Bush campaign charged in a memo sent to reporters and through surrogates that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.

On Wednesday and Thursday, as Kerry campaigned in Seattle, he was greeted by another Bush ad alleging that Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.

The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

Essential signing.

I just saw this petition linked from Medley. This is one of my personal causes, and I urge everyone to visit and sign the petition at the very least--and write personal letters to your Congresspersons and Senators, preferably.

We must act now to ensure that our voting systems produce accurate and verifiable results. Some states are planning to use machines that will not allow voters to verify their choices. This means that any flaws in the machine or software will never be caught -- and no recount will be possible.

And the head of the largest e-voting machine company -- who is a major contributor to George Bush and has promised to deliver Ohio to him -- asks that we just trust him.

Today we call on Congress and the states to require any electronic voting machine used in this election to produce a paper trail -- one that allows voters to verify their choices and officials to conduct recounts.

I have a special place in hell reserved for those who attempt to falsify electoral results, no matter what party. And, frankly, I just don't understand the strong Republican opposition to this demand for accountability; surely you realize the most patriotic thing an American can do is vote and expect his or her vote to be accurate. Beyond that, it just looks stupid politically to not demand accountability in the name of patriotism! After all, how long will it take for us lib'ruls to turn the tables and ask, "Why do you hate America?"

Lovely Rita, sitemeter maid!

Okay, I knew I was unpopular, but...


(s13rospice)

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I think, as I know of at least one visitor this week (me), that Site Meter is farked. (Oh, naturally, NOW it shows up... for the past two days it's been telling me "Service Unavailable.")

Cripes.

Why do I let this sort of thing get to me? I said something thoughtless at another blog, got raked over the coals for it, apologized, and got raked over the coals again. That, combined with loneliness (K's at a fish conference in Oklahoma), has made me very depressed, despite that it was a wonderful day in general.

I seem to be in another phase of ignoring Rooster Spice in favor of other pursuits. In addition to Duck Sauce (we didn't win the audience favorite award, by the way), I've been working on a small C program to convert Project Gutenberg etexts into Palm Markup Language files, to be used with the Palm Reader. Although I think it's been renamed to eReader. Gotta have an "e" or an "i" in all computer products these days! That's why I'm calling my little program iGute2Reader. Well, except the "i."

Now there's nothing left to watch but "Law and Order" spinoffs.

That was a worthy ending to a very good series. And like Illyria, I'm feeling grief.

And so the Universe ended.

Running Mac OS X on a PC? Yes! Holy shit.

New toy.

It arrived on Friday morning--a day sooner than expected. I should have bought a laptop years ago--what a convenience. Although I did feel somewhat ashamed when we had all three Macs on upstairs, all running Safari, tuned to three different web-pages. It's the twenty-first century equivalent to having three television sets in the same room, and it seems so wasteful. It's true, of course, that television is purely passive, not creative, but there's very little creativity in browsing Homestar Runner, Palm Digital Media, and the Apple Store.