Early Voting: Clusterfuck

M E M O R A N D U M

TO: Dr. Brenda Snipes, Broward County Supervisor of Elections

CC: Everyone

FROM: The Bone

SUBJECT: Jesus H. Christ, you guys are incompetent.

I regret to inform you that your office is apparently populated by cretins.

I waited in line to vote for over three hours today. This is time that I could have spent napping, doing yardwork, watching The Seventh Seal for the eighty-millionth time... but instead I chose to spend the afternoon performing my civic duty and helping to select the next leader of the free world.

Scratch that... make it: trying to perform my civic duty, and so forth.

The line to vote wrapped around a substantial protion of the Lauderhill Mall, which is where I went to cast my ballot. After three hours of standing in the sun, I entered the building only to realize that it would be another two or so hours before I got to enter my choices into a Diebold-manufactured voting system that would probably just eat my vote anyway.

So, I left. I'll take a half-day of leave without pay and do it Tuesday afternoon.

I'm pretty galled about the whole matter. There are usually ten or so machines operating in each precinct on Election Day. With far fewer places open for early voting, it seems to me that some of those machines could have (and should have) been moved to the early voting locations. Not to put on the tinfoil hat of conspiracy or anything, but it's almost as though you don't want people to vote.

I know that's not the case though. Nothing like that ever happens in Florida. Not at all.

It's unconscionable that the elections office wasn't better prepared to handle the crowds. Lauderhill is a majority black community, and a common refrain among folks was that their vote today was revenge for what happened in 2000 in Florida (I'm certain that I don't need to remind you of all that). Revenge may not bring out the best in people... but it brings the people out. I can't believe that this wasn't planned for more effectively.

To show you that I'm not unreasonable, here's some unsolicited advice to help in future elections: Have more than two and a half machines up at early voting sites. I almost made a crack about "selecting poll workers who weren't suffering from stage-three syphilis," but it's not really their fault that your office didn't do the job properly.

Thank you.

Hugs and kisses,

The Bone

Weapons of Mass Delusion

Three of Four Bush Supporters Still Believe in Iraqi WMD, al Qaeda Ties

Analysis of a Republican Mailing

The previous owners of my house were staunch Republicans, so I've received quite a few mailings from the RNC and other assorted ne'er-do-wells. Here's a description of one for those of you fortunate enough to not receive these. No need to thank me; keeping you informed is its own reward.


FRONT:

Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Republican governor and classy guy

When Nixon died, Hunter S. Thompson wrote a vituperative obituary about his old nemesis (which I would link except that I can only find it on paid-subscription-only sites) containing lines like "If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles."

So it's interesting, given the breadth of Thompson's spite for Tricky Dick, that the gonzo journalist compares him favorably to Bush.

As your lawyer I advise you to go read this article by Thompson, where he unleashes his rancor against the current occupant of the White House. The addled old bastard still has it.

Sean "Mr. Jennifer Lopez P. Diddy" Combs brought his "Vote or Die" tour to Miami on Thursday.

Although I appreciate Mr. Almost-Lopez's aims in trying to get the youth vote out, this has got to be one of the worst slogans ever. "Let me get this straight, Mr. Combs... if I don't vote I'll die, but if I do vote, I'll achieve immortality? Is this the immortality where I remain 31 and virile and evergreen forever, or is it the kind of immortality where I'm changed into some undead, vampiric thing who skulks about at night and survives by drinking the ichor of children and pure-hearted maids? You know, like Donald Rumsfeld has? And speaking of Rummy, doesn't immortality mean that I'll have to spend the next several centuries in a world where cretins like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Perle and so forth are considered statesmen? I'm so conflicted!"

Of course, Puffy's slogan is not as bad as any of those composed by the putative "professional comedian" Gallagher when he entered the California gubernatorial recall in 2003.

Pre-November 2nd Mentality

It seems that the people who bandy about terms like "September 10th mentality" are all among the slavish automaton followers of the man who was actually "President" (those quotes are so very necessary when talking about Bush) on September 10th, and whose own mentality brought us so much pain on that day.

Therefore,the next person I catch unironically using any of the following phrases...

September 10th mentality
Pre-September 11th mentality
Pre-September 10th mentality (Bush's mangling of the blurb at one of the debates)

... is gonna get punched in the liver.

I'm The Bone, and I approved this message.

The Spectacle

This election is officially a joke. To make sense of the first postmodern election, I turn to the first chapter of The Society of the Spectacle [using this translation], by Situationist theorist Guy Debord.

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[all quotes are from Society of the Spectacle. My interpolated hyperlinks are an attempt at imposing the Situationist aesthetic of detournement onto the texts, to some extent]

1. The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation.

4. The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.

9. In a world that really has been turned on its head, truth is a moment of falsehood.

12. The spectacle manifests itself as an enormous positivity, out of reach and beyond dispute. All it says is: "Everything that appears is good; whatever is good will appear." The attitude that it demands in principle is the same passive acceptance that it has already secured by means of its seeming incontrovertability, and indeed by its monopolization of the realm of appearances.

13. The spectacle is essentially tautological, for the simple reason that its means and ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets on the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire globe, basking in the perpetual warmth of its own glory.

21. So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of a society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep.

25. ...The spectacle is self-generated, and it makes up its own rules: it is a specious form of the sacred. And it makes no secret of what it is, namely, hierarchical power evolving on its own, in its separateness, thanks to an increasing productivity based on an ever more refined division of labor, an ever greater comminution of machine-governed gestures, and an ever-widening market. In the course of this development all community and critical awareness have ceased to be; nor have those forces, which were able - by separating - to grow enormously in strength, yet found a way to reunite.

34. The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes image.

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I suppose I could have phrased all of the above less pretentiously by just throwing out a quote from Airplane!: "It looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue."

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Kurt Vonnegut is completely rad. The linked piece is his latest column from In These Times, wherein he interviews his fictional alter-ego Kilgore Trout.

Rethinking Schools

I just ran across the website for the magazine Rethinking Schools. From the section on their "History and Philosophy:"

Rethinking Schools began as a local effort to address problems such as basal readers, standardized testing, and textbook-dominated curriculum. Since its founding in 1986, it has grown into a nationally prominent publisher of educational materials, with subscribers in all 50 states, all 10 Canadian provinces, and many other countries.

While the scope and influence of Rethinking Schools has changed, its basic orientation has not. Most importantly, it remains firmly committed to equity and to the vision that public education is central to the creation of a humane, caring, multiracial democracy. While writing for a broad audience, Rethinking Schools emphasizes problems facing urban schools, particularly issues of race.

Throughout its history, Rethinking Schools has tried to balance classroom practice and educational theory. It is an activist publication, with articles written by and for teachers, parents, and students. Yet it also addresses key policy issues, such as vouchers and marketplace-oriented reforms, funding equity, and school-to-work.

The current issue has a great article on No Child Left Behind (in standardized test format), and poking around on the site has revealed a treasure trove of articles on government educational policy, social justice issues in the classroom, and any number of other informative and inspiring things. I'm surprised that I've only discovered this magazine now despite having taught school for the past several years.

I was in the school library after work, catching up on some reading (I don't go home on Mondays until fairly late because of my community-college adjuncting gig). The "computer club" was in there as well, constructing websites using FrontPage or whatever it is that elementary school computer clubs do. Anyway, a fourth grader came across a picture of Bush on the internet, and said "Hey, I'm George W. Bush, and I took us into a war for no reason at all!"

I really hope that my grin wasn't obvious. For the record, I wasn't the person who politically corrupted him.

Honesty may not always be the best policy when one is looking for work... but I imagine it could be very cathartic. Tone has put his resume up on Craigslist with some choice words for potential employers, and it's pretty funny. Find it here. A representative quote:

Are you looking for a computer language or API on there that I don't know? Well guess what? I'll fucking learn it! What's with you assholes? I went to college to learn how to learn, but you dickheads are only interested in hiring someone who already has a decade of experience in very specific technologies. Why don't you go all the way and advertise for "time travelers from the future who happen to carry with them the source code for all the software our company will produce for the next ten years?"

Compromise, Hell!

Via Creek Running North: Poet and novelist Wendell Berry has a piece on environmentalism in Grist that is practically a primer on the aims and challenges of environmentalism. From the article:

It appears that we have fallen into the habit of compromising on issues that should not, and in fact cannot, be compromised. I have an idea that a large number of us, including even a large number of politicians, believe that it is wrong to destroy the earth. But we have powerful political opponents who insist that an earth-destroying economy is justified by freedom and profit. And so we compromise by agreeing to permit the destruction only of parts of the earth, or to permit the earth to be destroyed a little at a time -- like the famous three-legged pig that was too well loved to be slaughtered all at once. The logic of this sort of compromising is clear, and it is clearly fatal. If we continue to be economically dependent on destroying parts of the Earth, then eventually we will destroy it all.

You'll only find it incendiary if you haven't been paying attention.

I don't really have a lot to say right now. I'm really busy, will be really busy for the next several days, and haven't been following the election too closely, so topical political posts won't really say anything beyond what you're already hearing from other blogs written by people with more time. Posting will likely resume in a couple of days.

In the meantime, here are some other places you can visit on what Bush would call "the internets:"

semiselector: Theron, a friend from San Diego, is one of the smartest and funniest people I know. He just started up a blog, and despite his lack of familiarity with the "shift" key it's pretty entertaining.

SLSO Blog: Found this via Waveflux... it's "an ongoing account of life with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra," written by an employee of the organization. It's remarkably well-written.

Sitings: Essays on Place and Arrival: Not so much a blog as a collection of essays, Jarret Walker's writing is lush and remarkably descriptive. I particularly recommend "The Hole in California," an essay about California's Central Valley. He also has some travel and book pieces up on epinons, and really needs to get a blog soon!

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In other news, I'm premiering three compositions this afternoon; settings for voice and piano of poems from Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus (using David Young's brilliant English translation). It's a work in progress, since these three pieces are the completed sections of what will eventually be a longer song cycle, at least as soon as I turn my sketches of the additional songs into finished compositions. The occasion is a benefit concert for the excellent music program at The Church By The Sea in Bal Harbour, where I've been working as tenor soloist for over a year now. I'm pleased with how the songs turned out... the baritone soloist at church (a monster singer who also has a doctorate in guitar performance) said "They sound like Ned Rorem... but better." I thought that was very gracious.

Oh Ralphie Boy, The Pipes, The Pipes Are Calling

Count me as one person that is glad Ralph Nader is running for president.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not voting for him. I'm a Green Party member who voted for Nader in 2000, but this time out I'm voting for Kerry. Most likely. More on my latest chagrin with the Democrats later.

I immediately registered as a Democrat when I turned 18... but it became obvious over the next several years that the leadership of the party has turned away from traditional Democrat values (for an excellent primer on what those are, read Garrison Keillor's Homegrown Democrat). So I switched parties to one that I felt best represented my views, and haven't ever regretted it.

I would love to see the Democrats shift a little away from the center-right position they have taken in recent decades. Kerry's a step in the correct direction (hence, my vote; if Lieberman had been nominated I would have voted for Nader or Cobb). The idea that Kerry is somehow entitled to Green votes without doing anything to earn them is ridiculous, though.

If the Greens serve a function on the national level of politics, it is to show the Dems that there is a large constituency out there that will vote for progressive candidates. Rather than alienating us, the Democrats would do better to co-opt the Greens in the same way that the Republicans have co-opted the evangelicals: by throwing us some bones on the platform and in policy statements. Don't like Nader? Want the votes that would otherwise go to him? Fine. Make him irrelevant!

The "lesser of two evils" argument is bullshit, but I'm indulging it this November for the first and last time. If Kerry governs like an Eisenhower Republican a la Clinton, if he puts up with all kinds of crap from the frothing Republican mouth-breathers in Congress, if the relentless third-party bashing by Democrats continues, I will never... never... vote Democrat again.

I didn't watch the debate last night. As Dick Cheney, who logged five deferments during the Vietnam years, might have said: "I had other priorities." (Here's a great link discussing Cheney's dubious history as well as the "Cheney Jinx")

The Schadenfreude Factor: You've no doubt heard about this: Bill O'Reilly slapped with sexual harassment lawsuit (this link is probably not safe for work, as it contains explicit transcribed conversations featuring "Falafel Bill's" sexual proclivities). That's gotta hurt.

Hopefully everyone here is aware of Sinclair Broadcast Group's plan to pre-empt local programming to run an anti-Kerry film on 62 stations. Those markets can potentially reach 25% of the American public. Trust me, it's much worse than I make it sound. Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly has the whole story.

There has been some success with boycotts of Sinclair's advertisers. Get in on the action. Information is at Stop Sinclair and Boycott SBG. Even if you don't live in a Sinclair market (I don't either), take some time to write a letter or three. Talking Points Memo, Eschaton and Phil at Waveflux are on top of the story.

I own one hip-hop album: Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury, from Michael Franti's early project The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. It's a fantastic album... socially conscious without being trite, angry without being overbearing. Plus, it features eight-string guitarist Charlie Hunter, who is nothing short of amazing.

The most interesting and poignant track on the album is a spoken word piece by Franti featuring an involved accompaniment by Hunter. It's really talking to me right now. I feel a poetry post coming on...

Music And Politics

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I would tell you that sometimes it’s easier to desire
and pursue the attention and admiration of 100 strangers
than it is to accept the love and loyalty
of those closest to me

And I would tell you that sometimes
I prefer to look at myself
through someone else’s eyes
Eyes that aren’t clouded with the tears of knowing
what an asshole I can be, as yours are.

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I might be able to listen in silence to your concerns
rather than hearing everything as an accusation
or an indictment against me

I would tell you that sometimes
I use sex to avoid communication
it’s the best escape when we’re down on our luck
But I can express more emotions than laughter, anger, and let’s fuck

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics...

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I would tell you that I pooped in my own dog dish
And sometimes I would rather face not eating
than face licking it clean
And admitting when I’m selfish
And I’d tell you that I’m suffering
from the worst type of loneliness
The loneliness of being misunderstood,
or more poignantly
the loneliness of being afraid
to allow myself to be understood

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics
I would tell you that the personal revolution
is far more difficult
and is the first step in any revolution

If ever I would stop thinking about music and politics...

I would tell you that music is the expression of emotion
And that politics is merely the decoy of perception.
Michael Franti

Don't Hate the Haters, Play the Game

We'll stay on the hunt on Al Qaida. We'll deny sanctuary to these terrorists. We'll make sure they do not end up with weapons of mass destruction. It's the great nexus. The great threat to our country is that these haters end up with weapons of mass destruction. (George W. Bush, at the 10/8/04 debate)

Aside from the fact that Bush doesn't know what "nexus" means, the really interesting thing in this quote (to me, anyway) is Bush's use of the phrase "haters." Is he playing to the youth vote? Are we days away from seeing a campaign commercial like the one that follows?

BUSH (spoken with that Texas twang): "The great threat to our country is that those haters are all up in my shit. As President, I will bust a cap in they ass. I'm George W. Bush, and I approved this mizzle."

I think I'm going to discontinue the bookblog. I guess there's already been a de facto discontinuation, as I haven't posted since May. Here's my rationale, as published over there:

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OK, I think this project is dead.

A couple of months ago I read an article making fun of stereotypical "book reviewer" lingo. While reading it, I realized that many of the reviews I've written have the same qualities, and in many cases even the same jargon. I found it a little disconcerting that I had internalized the lingo to such a large extent, especially since I don't really read book reviews. Even though I read a bunch of books over the summer, The inspiration to write about them has been lacking.

I've deleted the more embarrasingly-written reviews, and left some up. Maybe I'll restart it at some point. For now, though, I'll let it lie fallow.

FYI: timewellspent has a show tonight at Dada in Delray Beach (full disclosure: I'm playing electric piano and organ for the band). Saturday night at Dada is home to Popscene, voted Best Local DJ by the Broward-Palm Beach New Times. Tonight should be fun; Helen Horal is also on the bill, and she's wonderful. Put on your cardigans and give up the rock.

The debate transcript can be found here.

The biggest apoplexy-inducing moment of the night was when Bush, immediately after babbling about "clean coal technologies," said "I guess you'd say I'm a good steward of the land."

Reading the transcript, it's clear that Bush just cannot speak. This has been evident for years, but his lack of facility with the language was quite apparent last night.

Instead of blogging the debate I decided to jump in on this MonkeyFilter debate thread. Some good stuff there, and it will be pretty obvious which comments are mine. My opinion: Kerry had more substantive answers, and held his own. Bush surpassed the low expectations placed upon him as a result of the last debate, which will be enough for a lot of people, but gave a lot of non-answers and did a lot of yelling. Advantage: Kerry, although it was kind of a draw in some ways.

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Something I forgot to write about after the Cheney/Edwards debate: At one point, Cheney stated that Kerry had "a thirty-year history of being on the wrong side" of foreign policy and security issues. I found that interesting. Thirty years ago Kerry was protesting the Vietnam War. So, is Cheney saying that the Vietnam War was totally valid, that we were correct to be involved there and that Kerry's position then was indefensible? It would be the height of hypocrisy for Cheney to suggest that, as he received five deferments in order to avoid service.

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I watched "The McLaughlin Group" before the debate. McLaughlin asked the question "Is the world less stable now as a result of the Iraq war?" Republican commentator Tony Blankley (longtime political observers will recall that he was Gingrich's spokesman during the "Contract On America" years) tried to spin by saying (I'm paraphrasing) "We had to destabilize it now so that we could restabilize it later." At that point, a panelist from the Financial Times said "Isn't that a Leninist view, Tony?" So tonight I got to hear someone call Tony Blankley a Leninist. Life is occasionally quite grand.

Master Debater

I was expecting a good debate last night (the talented trial lawyer vs. the crafty CEO), and I wasn't disappointed. Edwards went on the attack (his opening salvo: "You are still not being straight with the American people"), Cheney spent a lot of time on the defensive, what with Edwards bringing up Iraq, Halliburton, bin Laden, the jobs situation, and even Cheney's past Congressional votes against Head Start and MLK Day. Although Dick held his own (heh!) I'd say that Edwards won it, albeit by a slighter margin than Kerry's rhetorical onslaught last week.

Two of the more egregious lies and misfortunate statements on Cheney's part:

"The candidate has his facts wrong. I never suggested that there was a connection between Saddam and 9/11." Of course you didn't "suggest" it, YOU GODDAMNED STATED IT OUTRIGHT! On a number of occasions! Hell, I was watching Fahrenheit 9/11 today and there you are, saying on-camera, "There was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda." A thought: if you're gonna tell a whopper of a lie, make sure that the evidence of said statement being a lie is somewhere other than a movie grossing well over a hundred million dollars.

"We're 4 days away from a democratic election in Afghanistan." Yes, one in which the only viable candidate is the UNOCAL advisor the Bush administration installed. It's about as legit as the elections held in Saddam-era Iraq.

Via MeFi: Here's a blog written by a PERL script. Wow. The Metafilter thread has more background info.

Along the same lines: The Postmodernism Generator, which has been around for a while. Keep hitting refresh!

Diversions

1. Something Awful has some things to say about Gmail. Just read it, seriously.

2. Tone has far too much time on his hands.

Dissent

Via Waveflux: Former U.S. Rep. John H. Buchanan, a Republican from Alabama, issues a no-holds-barred critique in Sunday's Birmingham News on the Bush debacle in Iraq.

Via MeFi: Moderate Republican senator Lincoln Chafee (RI) declares that he will not vote for Bush. [NYT link, registration required. If you don't want to register there's always bugmenot]

My coworker M recently ranted about the Republican ads apparently making fun of the fact that Kerry windsurfs. M wrote:

Quite honestly, I'd like a president who spends his leisure time decompressing, and not figuring out ways to empty the treasury, send countries into civil war, and make his friends billions. And to the brain-dead fools who [in a Sports Illustrated poll] voted that Bush (who runs and lifts weights) is more athletic than Kerry, who windsurfs, snowboards, runs, plays hockey, bicycles, mountain bikes, trapeezes, climbs mountains, yodels, and plays tournament bridge, what the hell were you thinking?

Inspired by this, I'm listing some little-known facts about both candidates so that you might make a more informed decision in November. You're welcome.

KERRY: Wrestles alligators.
BUSH: Wrestles with the cap on a nice, tall bottle of Heinz ketchup; is unable to comprehend "57 varieties" since his Neolithic brain cannot conceive of any number greater than 2.

KERRY: Accomplished trapeze artist.
BUSH: Bought blow from the bearded lady in 1971.

KERRY: Speaks fluent Sanskrit.
BUSH: Occasionally speaks without Rove or Cheney conveying talking points through an earpiece.

BUSH: Read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to his daughters when they were infants, and only made a couple of mistakes.
KERRY: Recites The Iliad from memory as after-meal entertainment at dinner parties.

KERRY: In college, had sex with one hundred women in a single night and got them all pregnant. Talk about virile!
BUSH: Felt deep and unrelenting shame after playing homoerotic games such as "Soggy Biscuit" as a fraternity pledge.

BUSH: Walked out on a restaurant tab in Des Moines.
KERRY: Shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

The choice is clear!

Floridumbass

The mess that is Florida nevertheless came as a profound shock to a group of international election monitors who toured the state last week. Dr Brigalia Bam, who chairs South Africa's Independent Electoral Commission, was stunned by the patchwork of jurisdictions, rules and anomalies. "Absolutely everything is a violation," she said. "All these different systems in different counties with no accountability... It's like the poorest village in Africa."

That's from this article from The Independent UK on voting irregularities voting-related fraud, intimidation and other shenanigans in my state of residence. Not good.

I don't know what else can be done. Writing letters and emails doesn't help, phone calls don't help, protests fall on deaf ears and as a pacifist I can't possibly endorse a bloody revolution. Until more people give a shit, we're screwed. Thanks, crooks! Thanks, apathetic morons!

An old list from McSweeney's: Recently Discovered Voting Irregularities in Florida.

I didn't get to watch the first debate, because I had rehearsal. I haven't watched debates in a long time, since they always have a little too much "beauty pageantry" about them for my tastes. That being said, it was wonderful to hear that Kerry trounced Bush. Alternately, one could use any number of dirty-sounding phrases to describe the matchup: "Kerry beat Bush," "Kerry took Bush to task" or "Kerry ate Bush alive."

Some Republican spin doctor (I heard this on either NPR or Air America, and I think that it was said by the reprehensible Karen Hughes, but I'm probably wrong) tried to salvage Bush's performance by saying "America doesn't elect a 'debater-in-chief,' it elects a 'commander-in-chief.'" While this is true, anyone that doesn't believe it absolutely necessary that the President... the fucking President, for Christ's sake!... is able to clearly and coherently express his policies and positions, without an eminence grise whispering talking points in his ear, simply lives in a different universe than I. When one considers the roster of "great Presidents," and the criteria that place them in that group, rhetorical skill is certainly a huge factor. Now that I think about it, conservatives always point to Reagan's public speaking chops as part of his legacy. Conservatives: Why are those same abilities for which Reagan is so revered suddenly unimportant when Bush is concerned? There you go, flip-flopping again.

Another paraphrased bite of post-debate spin (I'm also ascribing this to Karen Hughes, but don't hold me to it, because I was driving at the time): "Kerry spoke very eloquently, but Bush spoke from the heart, and that's what Americans want to hear." Bullshit! Americans want to hear someone who speaks with confidence and can show leadership through his abilities as a speaker.

Folks have been praising Kerry for shedding much of his more convoluted language and being able to talk in a way that resonates with "ordinary people," whoever the hell they are. I realize the importance of being able to code-switch and talk appropriately with your audience whoever they may be. But for the record, I like Kerry's literate, educated way of speaking. Bring on the parenthetical remarks! Bring on the subordinate clauses! The man is speaking my language!

A colleague of mine just had her fourth grade students do a mock debate as "Kerry" and "Bush," yesterday, using the candidate's arguments. When the class voted at the end of the "debate," Bush won by a 2-1 margin. This colleague is an amazing teacher and a great person, so out of respect for her political beliefs (I'm fairly certain she's conservative) I refrained from making the obvious response: "Of course Bush won. His language and policies are simplistic enough that they can be articulated by a fourth grader!"

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On a related note, Waveflux has generated what may very well be an important meme to propagate: Not merely tougher. Smarter.

Links for geeks

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Avengers Toys: Disassembled [via MeFi]

Star Wars vs. Star Trek in Five Minutes [ibid]

From Something Awful: A review of the worst roleplaying game sourcebook idea ever: the Book of Erotic Fantasy for d20 Dungeons and Dragons [via an email from Tone; probably not safe to read at work]

Also from SA: COBRA After-Action Report: COBRA's Creatures

For the lit geeks: Don DeLillo, Stadium Vendor

Vocabulary Words We Learned By Playing Dungeons & Dragons

Spider Man Reviews Crayons

An Excursion, And Some Poems

I've been in an unassailable funk for well over a week now. I realized that I needed to get outside, but even though I live in one of the beach-iest areas of the country there's precious little chance I would have done so with the siren song of a relaxing day at home calling me.

So I got up bright and early this morning and drove down to Key West. I'm typing this in an Internet cafe about a block from the Hemingway House. I'd never been before, and it was pretty awesome. I'm off to the beach, and will drive back up before nightfall.

This is where I would quote Jimmy Buffet if it weren't for two factors standing in my way: I detest his music (sorry, Parrotheads), and couldn't possibly live with myself if Buffet lyrics showed up in my blog.

Of course, I'll gladly throw out quotes from others. I haven't done a poetry post in a while, so here are several poems by Ernest Hemingway, culled from Complete Poems.

The Age Demanded

The age demanded that we sing
and cut away our tongue.
The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.
The age demanded that we dance
and jammed us into iron pants.
And in the end the age was handed
the sort of shit that it demanded.
(1922)

To Good Guys Dead

They sucked us in;
King and country,
Christ Almighty
And the rest.
Patriotism,
Democracy,
Honor-
Words and phrases,
They either bitched or killed us.
(ca. 1922)

The Earnest Liberal's Lament

I know monks masturbate at night,
That pet cats screw,
That some girls bite,
And yet
What can I do
To set things right?
(1922)

Travel Poem

Go Mary I would say to thee
Go everywhere so you might see
Economics and history.
Painting on the walls is found
And no one has to paint his hound
Nor kiss the ass of any king
Nor, know really, anything.
But travel broadens all our parts
The ass first, and at last, our hearts:
If they can take what others made
Knowing it clear in light or shade.
But few have ever learned it so
So go, and throw, and throw and go
Some will catch it off the wall
Others will not reach the ball at all.
(1949)

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I have a longish political post or two in me, but need to go get my beach on.