On the occasion of the 1,500th installment of the online strip Goats, Jon Rosenberg invited GWB and Dick Cheney to speak. Hilarity ensued.

Three conversations

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(Conversation #1 is between myself and Julie earlier in the week; we're chatting via Yahoo! IM, and I'm trying to log into MSN Zone to play spades with her online)

julie_r: ok, now log out
chrisrieder2001: k
julie_r: log back in
julie_r: i'm still not seeing you. log back out.
chrisrieder2001: AHHHHHHH!
julie_r: try logging back in again.
julie_r: that didn't work. log out
chrisrieder2001: this sucks.
chrisrieder2001: this is like the internet version of the "hokey pokey." in hell.

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(Conversation #2 takes place at a board meeting for the men's chorus: we were in the process of ordering pizza...)

DOUG: I'm not going to have any; I have meatloaf in the oven.

CHRIS: Like a bat out of hell?

DOUG (laughing): Yeah, he's in there going, "Let me out!"

CHRIS: He's screaming, "I would do anything for love... but I won't do that!"

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(Conversation #3 is a phone call between myself and my friend Casey yesterday)

CASEY: Oh my God! Did you hear about David Lee Roth? He retired from music... to become an emergency medical technician!

CHRIS: (silence)

CASEY: Can you imagine having him as your EMT? You've just had a heart attack, and you look up and see all that hair, and he says (deep, dopey voice) "OK, you need to hold on, we're gonna get you to the hospital." Then he starts singing "Panama."

(a period of awed silence)

CASEY: He looks like Cloris Leachman.

Does whatever a spider can, or, "And that bear was my FATHER!"

Yeah, I know that in the past couple of days links to the following URL have flooded the Internet like a Bangladeshi monsoon. And I don't care; I'm linking it anyway. Take it, bitches:

Remixed Spider-Man comic strips (NC-17, rude, mean, not safe for viewing at work, don't click if you're overly sensitive, do not feed to puppies, and so forth)

Keep hitting refresh for additional strips, as there are 20 in all.

The Bush Doctrine As Risk Game:

THE BEGINNING:

George Bush's largest concentration of armies can be found in the Eastern and Western United States as well as Alaska. He also has a couple of armies in Central America. Outside of North America, huge concentrations of armies can be found in the Middle East and Afghanistan. A few armies remain in Peru and Brazil as a result of Reagan's adventures in South America during the '70s and '80s, and our recent alliances with the likes of Uzbekistan have brought Irkutsk and Mongolia into the fold. There's not much of a presence in Africa; Bush's lackadaisical response to the Charles Taylor nonsense last year gets him a couple of armies in North Africa, but not much more.

Bush therefore starts out with a healthy 11 territories. Not a bad beginning.


TURN ONE: TIE ME KANGAROO DOWN, SPORT

Bush invades India from the Middle East and Afghanistan. It's a tough fight (their possession of nuclear weapons translates into a lot of armies), but they eventually fall. From there, it's a clean sweep through Siam into Australia. Bush has decided to go with the "Australia Strategy," which is a time-honored tactic in Risk and one that will generate an additional two armies/turn with little peril. Way to go, George! He ends by refortifying armies into Siam and drawing a Risk card.


TURN TWO: DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA

Following the previous turn, opponent Hugo Chavez attacked Peru from Venezuela, taking it away from Bush. Therefore, our hero begins with 16 territories, which when combined with the "Australia bonus" gives him a total of 7 armies at the start of his turn. In a fit of pique, he places them all in Brazil, decimates Venezuela, and takes Argentina as well. Bush refortifies into North Africa (so the wacky Europeans can't sweep into South America) and draws a Risk card.

TURN THREE: THE REIMPLEMENTATION OF MANIFEST DESTINY

18 territories + South America and Australia = 10 armies (gained by restarting the draft). Bush places them all in the Eastern United States and goes to town on his home continent. The Canadian territories under attack prove to be rather hardy; there are a lot of people with guns there, as anyone who watched Bowling for Columbine knows. But eventually they all fall, with the exception of plucky Ontario. Bush takes his Risk card and passes the dice to the player on his left.


TURNS FOUR AND FIVE: GRATUITOUS VIOLENCE

Bush wants to sit tight for a couple of turns to build up armies... but needs to capture at least one country per turn to snag that coveted Risk card.

In turn four, he invades Kamchatka from Alaska... solely because the word "Kamchatka" is inherently funny.

Seriously, say it a couple of times. Kamchatka. Kamchatka. Admit it: that is a goddamned amazing word. Say it loud, and there's music playing. Say it soft, and it's almost like praying. I'll never stop saying, "Kamchatka!"

Turn five involves crushing the resistance in Ontario, and taking Iceland (Bjork doesn't put up much of a fight).


TURNS SIX AND SEVEN: THE ONSLAUGHT BEGINS

Turn six brings Africa into the fold. In turn seven, Bush marches through North Asia into the Ukraine and prepares for Armageddon.


TURN EIGHT: ALL YOUR MAP ARE BELONG TO US

The country with the world's largest population is no match for Bush's vast and well-disciplined armada, and China is handily defeated.

Bush then sets his sights on Europe. "This is what y'all get for not supporting me in Iraq," he drawls, as he begins to repeatedly throw the dice to batter down Europe's defenses. Great Britain falls first (interestingly, they don't put up much of a fight), followed shortly by Scandinavia. Southern and Northern Europe take some effort, but are toppled within 5 rolls each. Bush ends the game by taking down Western Europe from Great Britain: he storms the beach at Normandy while saying "Now you French people really have something to complain about!" In his excitement Bush accidentally inhales a pretzel, and the Heimlich maneuver is rapidly performed by a Secret Service agent.

Question for my HTML-capable friends

When I use the [blockquote] tag, as in the post below, the color of the quoted text and all text thereafter for the duration of the post does not display as gray, but as black. I'd like for the color to be consistent. Problem solved, thanks to Tone.

I used the following quote to illustrate my problems with the [blockquote] tag. It comes from an article found at common dreams by Greg Palast, and it's about about voter disenfranchisement in my mullet-headed state of residency...

Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."

By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white-majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.

In other words, in the white county, make a mistake and get another ballot; in the black county, make a mistake, your ballot is tossed.

The whole article is worth reading. And if you think this is bad, wait'll you see what happens when electronic voting is thrown into the mix.

In the news

Kerry invited Aspen resident and writer Hunter S. Thompson to ride in his motorcade and brought three copies of Thompson's book about the 1972 presidential race, "Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail" for autographs.

"Just to put your minds all at ease, I have four words for you that I know will relieve you greatly," Kerry told the fund-raiser. "How does this sound — Vice President Hunter Thompson."

It sounds totally great.

American Idle

Today was my first day in God-knows-how-long where I had no obligations whatsoever. The South Beach Gay Men's Chorus had performances this past Friday and Saturday, and those concerts were a blast. Now that they're over, I'm suffering from post-partum depression.

Here's an update on La Vida Rieder, in list form:

1. My friend Elliot had a spare PowerBook G4 laying around after upgrading all of his gear, and gave it to me. So I now have hot OS X action, which is rad. I'm enjoying playing with the PowerBook, but I really, really hate how my site looks in Safari... the greens appear sickly, and the blues are nauseatingly bright. I'm considering changing the look of the whole blog, but I've had this template for two years now and am not overly excited about tweaking another template around.

Speaking of PowerBooks... if you're heretofore unfamiliar with the p-p-p-powerbook scam, hit that link now and prepare to pee your pants.

2. When I sent this link about the Indian version of Spider-Man* to the perpetually quippy Tone Milazzo, his response was "It's the Untouchable Spider-Man!"

*link via monkeyfilter

3. Speaking of Monkeyfilter, I completely lost it in a thread over there last week (it'll be pretty obvious which username belongs to me). I'm not overly proud of that fact, but there are still some funny moments in that discussion.

4. I am playing around with Apple's GarageBand program. For all of my musical training and experience, I've not done a whole lot of recording, and GarageBand seemed to be a relatively idiot-proof way to begin. It comes with a whole lotta prerecorded drum loops and the like, which is good since I don't play drums and do not own a drum machine. It also has a shitload of guitar loops and the like which are all in kind of a 1970's "white-trash rock" style, like the worst six-string meanderings of Lynerd Skynerd that never made it onto an album. Despite the fact that the program was probably written by and for aging hippies, it's proving to be a painless introduction into the world of audio recording, and I'll upgrade to another program when I feel I know a little more about the process.

We will soon return you to your regularly scheduled political bitchfest... probably once I've seen Fahrenheit 9/11

From the "Yeah, I'll Believe It When I Fucking See It" Department:

"Federal prosecutors appear to be on the verge of filing criminal charges against Kenneth Lay, the former Enron chairman whose name became synonymous with corporate scandals after an accounting fraud sank the company in 2001."

My prediction: a presidential pardon. You heard it here first, folks.

The final Reagan post, or "Mourning in America"

So, today's the national day of mourning for the Gipper. I find that it helps to pretend that it's actually a national day of mourning for Ray Charles.

Putting the "voodoo" back in "voodoo economics"

The GOP's winning ticket for November: Bush/Zombie Reagan in 2004.

And since zombies eat brains, Bush has nothing to fear from his running mate!

The year was 1980. I was seven years old, and had just moved to California from Oregon. It was morning in America, but I was too young to reset the alarm.

In order to teach us something about our electoral system, my first grade teacher (Mrs. Santry, God rest her soul) assigned a few students to be the classroom "campaign managers" for the candidates. On the day of the national election, our class was going to "vote" for President as well.

One guess as to whom I was assigned (hint: it wasn't John Anderson).

I went home, made a bunch of "Vote for Reagan"-type buttons out of posterboard with safety pins glued to the back, and handed them out to my classmates the following day. It would be the last time I would ever academically overachieve.

On November 4 1980, my button-making wizardry handily delivered Mrs. Santry's class into the hands of the Republicans. When Reagan won the national election as well, I felt an absurd surge of pride... as if, through my Karl Rove-like primary school machinations, I helped secure the election for Reagan.

So, the Reagan years are all my fault. I'm really sorry; I was only seven, and didn't know any better.

Difficult confession: I dug the Republicans growing up, but mainly because my grandparents (with whom I lived for a while) were Republicans, and because of Lincoln. My perception of the party changed as a result of a Reagan misadventure: the Iran-contra wackiness. I recall watching a little bit of those hearings while junior-high-aged, reading about it in the newspaper, and thinking "What the fuck?" That realization that the Reagan White House was full of crooks, coupled with an increasing awareness of peace and social justice issues, set me on the path to becoming a flaming liberal. By the time I read Johnny Got His Gun and A People's History of the United States in high school, there was no turning back.

As much as I despised Reagan's politics, Alzheimer's is a terrible way to go. I don't feel bad at all over his death; partly because his policies were on the whole ruinous, but mostly because at the end of his life he was a human being with Alzheimer's who is now suffering no longer.

Q: Hey, Bone! Where were you when Reagan died?

A: At the hairstylist, getting highlights and embracing my metrosexuality.

Via Atrios, a great article on Reagan's liberal legacy.

Owning a home isn't always fun and games... as Waveflux points out in Tales of Homeowning: The Hellmouth.

Warning: don't read that post if you're eating a meal, have just eaten a meal, or are especially repulsed by fly larvae.