No more vengeful geeks, please

I've been reading Fear & Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson, since I figured it would be perfect for the election season. Well, the book's hit or miss (he does meander, after all), but it's fascinating to see who turns up in it. And how different the times where.

Thompson calls Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist "a vengeful geek" after he was confirmed for the court. The terrifying thing is that, prior to Willie, the Democrats successfully turned away two candidates who were supposedly worse than him.

Ron Dellums shows up too, talking about how a Dem can beat Nixon: "It's time for someone to lead all of America's N**gers. And by this I mean the Young, the Black, the Brown, the Poor -- all the people who feel left out of the political process." You won't hear him talking like that today.

Seymour Hersh -- who later became a journalist for the New Yorker and exposed both the My Lai massacre and Abu Ghraib -- appears as Eugene McCarthy's press man. (He quit in 1968, calling Gene a "closet racist." Can you imagine Howard Dean's advisor Joe Trippi doing that?)

And Ted Kennedy's all over the early primaries, even though he hadn't declared. Just think, if he'd run that year he may never have dunked that girl in the river and we would've had another Kennedy in the White House.

It's weird looking back and wondering how everything might've turned out differently. Would crazy Texas girls be making up stories about Obama supporters carving up her face? Would John McCain's brother be calling 911 to complain about bad traffic?

You probably wouldn't need cheering up so badly. Well, go see Mike Leigh's new film, Happy-Go-Lucky. It'll make you glad to be alive, and that's saying a lot these days.

Where's Pitt the Elder when you need him?

Argh, I didn't think this election could possibly make me more aggravated than 2000 or 2004, but here it is, ulcer time. Just when you start to get polls saying Obama's taking surprising leads in swing states like Florida, Colorado, and Nevada or getting a double-digit lead with young voters, Hispanics, and independents, you get freaky polls saying McCain is pulling even. And then you have McCain pulling the ultimate "I'll say it before you so you can't say it" ploy: Saying that Obama will do anything to win. My god, if that isn't true of McCain, I don't know what is.

Take, for instance, this crap about Obama's tax plan being socialist. Forget the fact that it helps the working class more than hurting them. The Daily Show offered a clip from 2000 in which McCain himself says that he believes when you reach a certain level of income it's good to pay a bit more.

Then there's McCain's own ACORN business, in which he's hired a Republican who's known for defrauding voters.

And Palin's running around in campaign clothes that cost $150,000. With that money Joe the Plumber could buy himself a mighty big snake.

One other bone to pick: McCain has this thing on his web site where you can make your own Joe the Whatever sign, and they'll supposedly send them to you. I sent in these:

I am Karl Rove the lying scumbag.
I am Sarah the homophobic zealot.
I am McCain the Bush suck up.
I am not hornswoggled by the Palin winking.

But for some reason, they didn't send them to me.

People keep saying I'm being an alarmist when I suggest that even if Obama wins we're going to have absolute chaos on our hands. Then someone goes and kills a bear and stabs it full of Obama signs, and people start to believe me.

Just when you think there can't be anyone dumber or eviler in office than Sarah Palin, along comes Michele Bachmann. John S. says that the only reason she got elected in the fine state of Minnesota is that she's from a district where there aren't many people and most of them are super rich. Hey, maybe she's never heard of McCarthyism. At least she spurred former GOP Governor Arne Carlson to endorse Obama.

Yes, I'm in need of cheering up. That's why I'm glad Kathleen sent me BoyBama (make sure you watch until the kid's ice rink breakdown).

And then there's this dance-off between the two (or three?) candidates. Badonkadonk.

Maybe we should just go back to voting with beans. Or stabbing each other on the way to the polls.

Who wants Obama to win? This one.

Hey, I’m back. Was sick there for a bit, then April was sick -- and it had nothing to do with her parents.

We both read during Litcrawl last week. I read a chapter from my in-progress Young Adult novel. You know, the one I've been working on for the last year, after getting a draft done via NaNoWriMo. Well, I had to find five minutes of text to read, and I couldn't fine anything I liked. This sucks, I kept saying.

But then I found a part that mentioned Daryl Hall and the word "pussyhound," and when are those two things not funny? I'll tell you when. When your girlfriend's parents are standing five feet away from you.

But luckily they were out of my sightline, and April says they were laughing, so I guess there won't be more poisonings in the future.


Did you see the debate the other night? Dear god, can I say how much I hate John McCain now? The man has more facial tics than a puppy romping through a swamp. Check him out here, when he went back on Letterman to apologize for lying to him before about why he had to cancel an appearance. It looks like his eyebrows will explode at any time (and I always thought it would be his cheeks that ruptured), especially when his connection to G. Gordon Liddy is brought up.

Naturally, we're all sick to death of Joe the Plumber, who it turns out isn't officially a plumber. Seems he hasn't been licensed yet. I guess Joe the Almost Wannabe Plumber doesn't sound so great as a title. This guy hates government so much he refuses to give them any of his money, even his licensing fees (or his back taxes). Funny, he's going on and on about how Obama's tax plan is socialist -- someone should point out it's not so different from the current system, so that means we're socialists already. My god, Joe the Plumber called us socialists!

I caught Robert Greenwald on the Colbert Report last night. He's great for two reasons: One, he directed Xanadu, and two he makes all those left-leaning videos, about Iraq and Wal-Mart, and now John McCain. It's funny (did I say funny? I meant horrifying) how Letterman and Jon Stewart and Greenwald are the main people calling McCain on all his contradictions.

Obama's lead keeps increasing. However, now's not the time to get cocky. Do you remember how Al Gore had a double digit lead in 2000? Or that rural white voters still can't get over the idea of voting for one of "those people"? Or that there's another effect now in play, besides the Bradley Effect? This one says the polling numbers are off because poor whites don't like to answer polls to begin with -- and those are just the kinds of people who supposedly would rather not vote at all rather than vote for Obama.

Still, this election isn't all bad. At least we have that picture of McCain trying to suck the juices from Obama's tuckus.

Who exactly is a minor threat?

So, if things couldn't get any worse, April's parents tried to kill me on Sunday. I could've sworn they liked me, but there I was several hours after dinner, with my head stuck in the toilet bowl, ralphing up all that food they provided. (That said, April didn't feel so great either, but maybe that was part of their plot.)

I guess I should blame PF Chang's more than her loving parents. They've always hated me over there. I remember one time, back in 1996 after I'd finished serving knishes at the Stockton Asparagus Festival, and they gave me salad full of roaches. Gross.

Anyhoo, the veep debate was last night. I only saw the first 30 minutes before going to work, but that was long enough to hear Sarah Failin' tell Joltin' Joe and the moderator that she wasn't going to answer any questions that she couldn't, er, didn't want to. Will the "liberal" media take her to task for being folksy instead of showing that she doesn't know a thing about running the country? Hells no! And I love how she went on and on about how many regular people she knew -- not bothering to mention that if elected she would spend the next four years screwing them all.

In other news, I saw My Bloody Valentine on Tuesday. Loud. That's how it was. And blinding. They had a light show that was so intense that Marlo passed out! Literally fell on the floor. She's fine now, but I don't think she'll be asking for that MBV box set for Christ's Birthday. I gotta say, if I hadn't had a brownie bite beforehand, I would've thought that show was the biggest Naked Emperor ever.

Meaning it was nowhere near as great (or bizarre) as this video of Ben Kingsley as Ian Mackaye

The world is obviously going to blow up any minute.