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massive blog
middle east blogs
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Flint: Stir Up The Stagnation
Nov 2k4
Cooked in time for the Holidays
Somewhere in this space, I wrote that the Lions were on the come-up, charging towards respectability and ready to put the angry-kitty beatdown on any treacherous fool unable to see and respect the inevitable. So, I'm an idiot. The only way to look wise while making predictions about the Lions is to aim low, like gutterballs and cheap speed. Two generations of futility can not lie.
The Krippled Kittens are regressing, quickly, which fits in so far as the only way the Lions make rapid progression is when they're doing so in reverse. I've spend several-hundred dollars on the Lions this year, for games and gambling purposes, and it seems they are the proverbial troublesome cousin, half-full with charm and promise, and half-full with self-destruction and self-pity...and always ready to take your cash. It's enough to make a fandom violent.
On Thanksgiving, the Toof-less Lions got played like an immigrant hooker at a Vegas human bondage poker game. 41-6. The Lions usually look good on Thanksgiving, but not this year, where it seems that those early season wins against Atlanta and New York were just another spat of teases, of possibilities, of something to be taken seriously at our peril. Coach Mooch reminded the media that the Detroit Pussies looked pretty good during the first half of the game. Well, that's good to know. Half an effort, all the time, or full effort, half the time, puts you in the same place, where people who smell funny and lack dental plans are eager to play pool with you...you might even win the first couple of games.
It's maddening, because lately, just as the running game has finally found its legs (because Kevin Jones is finally healthy), the defense and passing game has gone straight to hell...no I take that back, because I assume you must have some degree of evil competence to earn a ticket to hell and party with Nixon and the crew. No, Champaign Joey has obviously stated to the locals and to the world that the Lions should let him go, so he can play for a less-cursed franchise. Harrington has looked worse with every game since early October. That's pathetic. This is his third year.
The defense is turning into a joke, while only two months ago, they were the cornerstone of a resurgent franchise. How does this happen? Dry Bly and Brock Marion are playing like men thinking hard about winter golf. Granted, Peyton Manning makes a lot of secondaries look bad, but 6 TD passes in three quarters, at the Lion's Den, on freakin' Thanksgiving, is just insane.
Maybe its time to start over once again, get rid of Joey, the defense, Mooch, the whole nine yards, and run through the comedy of errors again, and why not. Considering all the real-world crap Detroiter's have had to endure along the past 40 years, a perpetually sputtering football franchise makes perfect sense.
&%*#!!!
- k
Post Cold War Tug O' War between East and West
It's about to go off in Ukraine. For the uninitiated, Ukraine has been synonymous with pain for many centuries. From Ivan the Terrible through Stalin, famines and purges were the norm in Russia's favorite satellite province. Sad. Supposedly, Ukraine is an independent nation, able to choose it's destiny. Yet, Russia, which is very interested in reconstructing a base of power to wrestle with western Europe and the States, feels free to tinker with Ukraine's destiny, to the chagrin of Ukrainians themselves.
Now, on the heels of a shady election that threatens to insert a Putin lackey into the Ukraine's presidential high-chair, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have converged in Kiev, unwilling to accept more of the same, more domination from Moscow, more naked corruption, cronyism, and other properties of foul political bullshit tossed forth from Mother Russia since time immemorial. As De La Soul would say, Stakes is High.
- k
The Beatdown (B-ball version)
I got a call from my friend Lt. Dan last night:
"Are you watching the Pistons?"
"No." I was getting ready to hit a show at the Independent.
"Detroit's not looking so good."
Which has been more or less true for forty years, but I wasn't sure what the El-Tee was getting at.
"They had to call the game because a riot broke out at the Palace."
That's Detroit for you. Later on I saw video footage from ESPN.com and, man, all I can say is those fans probably got what they deserved. The fight started between two players, then two teams, and then a gaggle of beer-drunk Pistons fans chucked debris at the Indiana players, a lot of debris. It takes a lot of self-control to let such things slide.
Ron Artest, who plays for the Pacers, and who is also crazy and thus shaky with his self-control, got pinged with a full cup of something near the scorers table, right as the brawl had wound down. Artest then did what any crazy star athlete would do...he ran into the stands taking cuts at everyone within reach. So much for his season.
Fans, because of the heard mentality, think they can pull off lame antics against the players without fear of reprisal, and that's crap. No one deserves to be viciously taunted at work, and many fans are comfortable spewing the vilest of insults against players, and some even feel empowered to throw stuff or spit at them.
The strong are always targets of the weak, and since the weak, by definition, can not combat the strong head on, they resort to the kind of things these Pistons fans resorted to. They can talk about the adventure at work, impressing friends and strengthening the circle.
I've been a Pistons fan for almost 30 years, and just because a few of their season ticket holders are pointless ass-clowns without a clue, I won't even think about shunning my team. I do think that any fan who profanely taunts professional athletes or throws things at them ought to have their asses kicked and their jaws broken...some mouth-wiring and a hemorrhoid doughnut may provide some time for needed reflection.
Finally, though I think fans like the aforementioned deserve the physical abuse they received, it's still dumb for any multi-millionaire NBA player to put his career on the line for a charge into the stands, especially charging the stands in Detroit, not smart. At the end of the day, Ron Artest will lose about a season of playing time, as will Jermaine O'Neal, and that means Indiana has no shot whatsoever of winning a title this year. Being a Pistons fan, that makes me happy.
Acting crazy can get you ahead...being crazy rarely does.
- k
I'm really damn tired of writing about politics and all the noxious poo that spews from it, but the reality of things, and my own nagging conscience, demands it. Venting my heart and spleen about the Joey and Pussy Cats, er, Lions does more for me, in the short-term, like good chocolate, but it seems that this imaginary mandate awarded to the GOP (51 percent a mandate? Only a goddamned intellectual peckerwood like Bush can derive 'mandate' from 51 percent, but what the hell) has really made these dickheads bold. So, I must vent, really, I must, maybe daily, we'll see.
Because of crap like this:
The Bush Cabinet pt2 looks to be more conservative than the first version, which by any historical standard, was the most conservative in US history, seriously, this Cabinet, with Condi, and Gonzalez Da Executioner, and Rummy staying while Powell goes, well, it makes Nixon's Watergate cabinet look positively New Deal-ish. WTF? WTF? WTF? Does 51 percent equate throwing the entire government onto the dinner-plates of the radical right?
I said, several months back, that if we re-elected Bush, we'd deserve everything that comes our way. So, if collective punishment is good enough for Iraq, I suppose it's good enough for us, too. The Iraqi People, I am sure, will build an awesome country from the rubble that Saddam and Dubbya left behind. We too, shall build a better country from the stinking hellbroth of ignorance and fear that an eight-year trip of Bush Co. will leave behind long after they are gone.
More to come.
- k
Ol' Dirty Bastard (o.d.b....r.i.p.)
First time I heard 'Protect Ya Neck' was early in '93 in DC. First time I played that song in front of drinking customers was later that night. Everyone on the Wu Tang was trying to stand out on that song, their signature tune from back in the day, and cobbled together by nine hungry brothers with a lot to prove. Ol' Dirty Bastard was the fifth MC to spew on that track..."Baby baby c'mon, baby c'mon, baby c'mo---onnnnn. First thing's first now ya f&*^in' with the worst, i'll stick pins in ya head like a f&*^ nurse...." Dirty indeed. ODB was not the most talented (GZA or Rae) nor even the most charismatic (Meth, before the dang Right Guard commercials), but he was the most interesting. He was also the only major Wu Tang banger who released not one but two awesome solo albums. Ol' Dirty didn't need deodorant commercials or clothing lines to project his flavor.
Ol' Dirty was nutty, dangerous, and headed straight for where he wound up. I'm actually surprised he made it to 35, and I'm also sad he's gone. Watch for the memorials, the tributes, and the love towards ODB during the following days and weeks. In fact, ignore all that and play Return to the 36 Chambers, or Nigga Please, right now.
Still sounds fresh, doesn't it?
The Christian Thing (over and over)
Christianity in the abstract = good
Communism in the abstract = good
Now, I think that Christianity has a better track record than Communism...but I also happen to think that Communism is neck to neck with Smallpox as the nastiest thing to ever infect human beings.
Most kinks of Christianity allow for human whims, mistakes, and thus is the religion of atonement. It's a religion, like most of Islam, that demands love and protection of the weak. It doesn't make economic sense and that's just fine, humanity is better for the compassionate tenets of modern monotheism. Kindness, love thy neighbor, and strive for nobility and grace are great concepts.
I am a staunch secular humanist, as that is where my experiences and studies have taken me. However, I have no desire to try to squelch or even discredit Christianity, or Islam, and certainly not Judaism.
My problem, exemplified by the exploitation of religious-tinged wedge issues by politicians this year, is the radicalization of religion. My beef is with ignorant, angry assholes using ancient text as the literal works of entities they have no way of fact-checking.
There are powerful members of America's radical Christian right who are every bit as unhinged as Osama Bin Laden. People like Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones, and James Dobson. Men who think homosexuality is a sin against God. Men who think non-believers will be cast into hell. Men who think that a husband should rule over his wife. These are close-minded, fear-mongering dimwits who somehow think they can interpret the true meaning and purposes of God. Think about that. Think how utterly arrogant that is, for ANY human right here fastened to this gravitationally enhanced blue marble to think he or she knows what an omnipotent being is thinking.
See, that's the kind of small-minded snake-charming crap that takes humanity into blind alleys and brick walls at regular historical intervals. Folks are fighting and dying right now in large numbers over the interpretation of ancient texts. That's sad, and it angers me, because we should have reached a stage in our collective development where such nonsense should be pointless, but not yet.
Despite what revising pundits say, Bush was re-elected on the push of his bedrock of Christian beliefs, and that's fine, because we are, in reality, a Christian country. We've always been a Christian country. Thing is, Bush really believes in the Divine, really believes in miracles and other mainlines and tangents of Providence. It's a flat-earth mindset, and I really wish it would go away.
It's holding us back, and threatening to do worse.
- k
"Hey, it's all going to work out...here's sports" - Bill Hicks
St. Bill the Funny Man was talking about our mass media's culture of doom and gloom. He said it 13 years ago, doing an impression of an optimistic CNN anchor, which blew me away, because I'm not sure one exists, so it was a testament to Bill's creativity. Of course, Bill Hicks left many testaments to his creativity, and I still feel the bile rise a bit knowing that maybe the most gifted comic of all time died too young, 32, and without the fame and cash he deserved...not that he cared about that. If you can afford it, buy Bill's Relentless, a CD composed of early 90s stand-up routines, including the bit ragging on our news culture, Jesus, aliens, drugs, and rednecks running amok. Laugh and cry, he'll hit you on both sides.
No one watches or reads the news for positive spin, we can go out and mow the lawn or build a deck for that kind of peace, know what I mean? Okay, a caveat, the scientifically inclined derives great pleasure in keeping up with scientific journals, which are often very hopeful, as good science tends to be. But these folks are in the tiniest minority. The combined subscriptions to Science, Nature, New Scientist, NEJM, etc. doesn't even sniff what Time or Newsweek sells. That's just the print media. The electronic press, because they have so much time to fill, and so much depending on ratings, dig up dark angles on practically every story they broadcast. PBS science shows can't hang with FoxNews.
We want news that moves us, that warns us, that gives us stuff to worry about, and to make us feel better about ourselves. Think of COPS, which is not news per se, but newscasts are filled with COPS moments-- the interviews at disaster and crime scenes, the socioeconomic profiles of most perpetrators and victims. We turn on the news to see footage of the Indian village that just got swept into the Bay of Bengal by a cyclone, and think solemnly to ourselves maybe we don't have it so bad.
Ah...reap what ye sow.
Much as I bitch about the cult of media, and maybe I bitch about it because I once belonged to it, we need those egomaniacal reporters and producers in the field and in the studio. We need people who can look our President in the eye and ask a tough question, so we can all see the difference between truth and evasion. These people report what they figure actually interests us. That's why the Scott Peterson verdict (guilty as a motherf&*^er) is across every television screen. It's why the death of Arafat has garnered more attention than the Battle of Fallujah.
We're drawn to the drama queens, and so they gladly tell us what we are.
"'CNN: War, death, AIDS, recessions, depression...War, death, AIDS, recessions, depression...'" I looks out my window *crickets chirping*....where is this stuff happening?" - Bill Hicks
- k
Arafat (redux, reduced, ridiculed)
My strongest bile is poured upon those blessed with great talents, but without the strength and basic goodness to fully utilize them. Yasser Arafat was such a person, and about the kindest thing he's done in many years is die and thus release his people from decades of self-mutilation, physical and spiritual.
Arafat was a revolutionary, not a leader. He was father of modern Palestine, and he was also an engineer, and of course a terrorist and common crook. He dies leaving hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of donated dollars to his wife, while the subjects of his great cause continue to suffer in ignorance and poverty. Though Arafat was a Civil Engineer by training, he built nothing. All the funds donated by individuals and institutions over three-plus decades went into secret bank accounts and into 'security forces.' Arafat was no different than Stalin, wait, I'd say that perhaps Arafat was worse than Stalin, for at least Uncle Joe managed to build a superpower from the blood of his victims.
The West Bank and Gaza are in such a state, that rebuilding them, both infrastructure and culture, will take a generation under benevolent leadership. Arafat had a ten-year window, from the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993 onward, to build a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. He had an opportunity to create and nurture educational institutions to create legions of engineers and bankers and merchants from a very bright stock of people. Instead he taught the youngsters that they must suffer until Israel is driven into the sea. So, suffer they did.
Israel has done some nasty things over the past 50 years, but of course they've been at one time or another at war with the entire Arab world. How would you feel if you knew that the policy of your neighbors was simply your extermination? Jews have already dealt with that trip, and there is no way such an admirable tribe ought to deal with it again. Funny, Israel sprang up from a slice of scrub-land, used its intellectual capital to build a first-rate modern society while retaining its humanity in the face of many existential threats. If Arafat had a bit of decency in him, he would have convinced his people to use Israel as a model. I have no doubts at all that had Palestinians been led by a true visionary these past 20 years, today they would be on economic and social parity with the Israelis and three-forths of current Middle East drama would be moot.
Yasser Arafat, like any tinpot despot, was interested only in money and power. He was a lying piece of shit and got off from this planet far too easily. His last days should have been spent in a torture chamber, and if there is a God, he or she will not accept that treacherous bastard's soul.
- k
4 - 4 (those trifling kitty kats)
After yesterday's 17 to 10 victory, Joe Gibbs is 11 and 0 against the Lions. Back in the day, meaning during the 80s and early 90s, the Redskins typically greeted Detroit by scoring three touchdowns and teabagging the Lions' ballboy before half-time. Maybe I should take the glass-half-full approach and be thankful that at least this time the Lions were not blown out in their house by the formerly 2 and 5 Redskins. The more things change....
Coach Joe went off to build a NASCAR team and win more money and glory, but the football bug didn't go away. Now, back in the football field, Gibbs has been flustered by an anemic Redskins offense. Mark Brunell makes Joey Harrington look like Terry Bradshaw, and thus the Redskins have struggled this year. Coach Joe and the Skins were 2 and 5 heading into Ford Field yesterday...needing strong help to salvage their season.
Funny how the Lions can make you look better...like an Extreme Makeover crew for football.
Give us your crap quarterbacks, tired linemen, and weary coaching schemes.
Give us your sub-.400 records, your groaning fans, and your dying playoff hopes.
Cause the Detroit Lions will re-spark your dreams of glory and make you feel legitimate once again.
Christ, we did it for Green Bay, who were absolutely on their last leg 4 weeks ago. We did it for Dallas...a team that sucks so bad that they should be playing in the CFL this year. And we did for the Washington Redskins, right here at Ford Field.
"2 and 5 you say? Shoot, we'll make you look like the 67 Packers, cause we're the Detroit Lions, and that's what we do."
In all fairness, the Detroit defense was okay yesterday. They made Brunell look like a Pop Warner coach teaching his charges how not to throw a football. Clinton Portis ran for 147 yards, but it was on a whopping 34 carries, and both Portis and the Skins O-line played like cornered beasts. Fair enough. The Lions D gave up 10 points (Washington's other seven came from a blocked punt). That means the defense did it's job, so we must turn our beaten brow towards the....anyone...anyone...towards the....
When Harrington uncorked his seventh pass directly at the feet of Roy Williams, I let it loose from the club seats-- "He doesn't catch with his mut$^%###*ing feet! You idiot, you're cheating us!" Then some fans within earshot picked up on the mood and ran with it, hurling invective towards our millionaire kitties who were offensive only to the degree they stunk up the field. What else could we do? Offensively, the Lions were playing like a pack of winos searching the turf for an extra quarter before the liquor store closed.
Why can't the Lions be like the Steelers...come from the basement to the penthouse in one season? Why can't Detroit find a bona fide quarterback? For the love of God we haven't had a stud QB in 50 years. Fifty! Doesn't this concern anyone in the front office? Fifty years of incompetence at the most important position in the game is a bad sign. Really, it suggests the need for change. Yet every time the Lions make a change, it feels like changing a blown-out tire with one that's merely been slashed.
It goes way beyond QB of course, and I do think that Champagne Joey will be a good quarterback, or at least serviceable, and I'm sure he'd love to take a snap and not see four to seven enemy jerseys immediately standing atop his ass. Harrington's become a good scrambler this year, and we know why...the offensive line is f$*&ing dreadful. The right side of the line couldn't stop a rush of five kids in front of the Chuck E Cheese. It's pathetic. I don't know how good running back Kevin Jones is at this point because every time he takes a handoff, two to ten members of the opposition have their hands on him behind the line of scrimmage. Who drafted these people?
Oh Millen, that's right, the architect of this. Only in Detroit can you prove your incompetence over and over again for years on end and keep your job...and folks wonder why Japan kicked our asses in the automobile industry.
All this is great news for folks like Coach Joe Gibbs, who comes back to the NFL after a 12-year break and sees that the Detroit Lions haven't changed a bit.
Meow.
- k
04nov04
It just doesn't stop. I've got this big screed about my hometown that I plan to tack onto this site in a day or so, and I should be working on that right now, this very moment, instead of pausing for blog-style hackery. There is no lower form of writing, except maybe the 'comments' sections of blogs-- filled out by folks too lazy to even start their own blog...and that's pretty goddamned lazy. But what is easy these days? Death? Bankruptcy? Earnest Prayer....Redemption?
Oy. Yassir Arafat is, at this very moment, either dead or earnestly praying to avoid death. Or, he may be in so much terrible agony that he is earnestly praying for death. If that's the case, someone please strap a remote-controlled bomb-belt around that old morally-bankrupt hack and pitch him into the nearest armor-plated dumpster...then detonate. History shall never forgive or forget him, and yet we shall not miss him.
Say what you will about Israel's conduct since the Camp David talks broke down at the twilight of Clinton's presidency. The basic facts are these: Israel was invaded from hostile Arab forces in 1948 and 1967. After the 1967 war, Israelis decided it might make good sense to keep some additional land. After someone invades you twice, you SHOULD keep some of their land. History tells us that such action is usually the mildest reaction from victors who had to come forth from the brink of national extinction.
Secondly, when your adversary sends 100s of brainwashed teenagers and young adults to blow themselves up among your civilian population, well, that's going to make you a little crazy. If Mexico carried out a couple-hundred suicide bombings north of the Rio Grande to get back the land we took 150 years ago, how, exactly, do you think we would respond?
Goodbye Chairman. You wrecked an entire generation of young Palestinian minds. You blamed others for your incompetence, and responded to the offer of a lifetime with dreams of human hamburger. If there is a Hell, you've won yourself a special spot.
I earnestly pray that Arafat's successor hates death and loves knowledge. Is that so much to ask?
pt2 More post-Election Postage...or Baggage
Some liberals are freaking out over Bush's victory. I'm not happy about it, at all, but being a realist, I fully understand why it happened.
 |
The Christian Right is very strong in this country, and leftist voices sound like nails on the chalkboard. How does Maureen Dowd earn money writing? Seriously, she's terrible, a joke. She's almost as bad as Safire. And while I'm at it, why does the New York Times support such an uneven collection of columnists? I'm not talking left / right, but purely talent. Dowd, Bob Herbert, and Safire are all connect-the-dots partisan dimwits who've been perfecting their pandering skills for decades. They are so damn predictable, but boringly so. Contrast those three with uber-talents like Nicolas Kristof, Tom Friedman, David Brooks, and even Krugman, and the talent disparity is mindblowing. I want answers. Does MoDo have a grainy film of Bill Keller ass-raping teenage junkies? Who can find out these things. Myself, I think the world has grown darker and more dangerous in the past two days, but not because us Yanks are inherently bad, and not because our Chief Christian Warrior is so bad (domestically, social security reform will benefit me a lot). |
My twitchiness come from the ebbs and flows of humanity, of having read a few-hundred too many books and living amongst a third world mindset, both here in Flint and over in Southeast Asia. Perspective, like a sense of irony, is tough to shake once you have it. Bush has neither, not where it counts.
Sure, Dubbya has perspective in matters regarding personal redemption, and that is the foundation of his optimism, which is pretty cool. I like to think that's a big reason why Mrs. Bush and the Bush Twins so outright adore our President like they do. Personal goodness has that effect...and here is where the tragedy starts to play out. Tens of millions of Americans relate very closely to Bush's religious fervor. As I mentioned in a recent post, separation of Church and State is just about moot, give it another couple of Supreme Court appointments. We are slowly taking on the makeup of overseas theocratic institutions we are trying to destroy. This is not hyperbole, though I wish it were.
Dubbya does not have much when it comes to perspective. He is an incurious aristocrat who shuns travel and most levels of political wonkery. Again, he knows what is in his heart, and he believes that God has chosen him to carry on a great Christian fight. Dubbya does see this as a Christian fight, and at least 60 million Americans also see this as a Christian fight.
I don't know...I start thinking about the Scopes trial and I get queasy, not to mention what spurred our last Dark Age (incuriousness and violence as I recall). Christianity has not exactly revealed itself to be a beacon of scientific or philosophical advancement.
Possibly the saddest things regarding this growing mess are the voices of the left currently calling out Bush. For most Americans, people like Michael Moore and Maureen Dowd are harder to stomach than Jerry Falwell.
It is what it is.
- k
Now We Know
When all is said and done, Bush will have secured roughly 60 million votes for his re-election. 60 million Americans believe that Bush is more of a solution-provider than John Kerry. 60 million Americans believe that Bush is wedded to values more so than politics. Heck, maybe 60 million Americans may believe that the Bush Twins are hotter than the Kerry Daughters. On the last point, I would agree.
The image on today's front page is not my handiwork, though I'd love to take credit for it. No, Werner Horvath assembled that bloody thing, and since we're at war, blood works.
I'm having a tough time blogging with anything resembling a level head, and I guess that makes me a sore loser. It's weird because I don't even like John Kerry. I've torn him to shreds on many fronts and many levels across the past year and he deserved all of it. I'm left with this angry aching certainty in my gut that if Kerry were not such an overtly opportunistic flip-flopping douchebag, he'd be President-elect right now. This was Kerry's election to lose. Somehow he lost it. It drives me a little goofy right now thinking about it, because Bush is so very wrong, deeply and dangerously so, and not at all for the reasons that shrill ho's like Michael Moore like to cite.
Bush may know what is in his heart, but he sure as hell didn't know what was in Putin's heart, not to mention what was on Vlad's mind, when they got together in 2001. When Bush was campaigning for President in 2000, he didn't know who the President of India and or Pakistan were. Bush has said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus, and that when he wasn't absorbing a dose of SportsCenter, he liked to read Westerns and rub his member up against the....
Careful, it's a new era, full of mandates and vengeance. True, there were 60 million people who thought that Bush was more the answer than the problem. But be advised that there are at least 55 million Americans who feel somehow suckerpunched-- knocked into an alternate reality where a half-bright scion of an American Dynasty can rise from boozer to bible-thumper to leader of the free world without so much as knowing the history of his own country...not to mention the history of his religion, which, to beat a dead horse, is a little messy.
Bush has demonstrated that a chief executive can preside over criminal negligence, i.e. post-war Iraq, and not pay a price. Nothing more needs to be said, except, here are some parting truths (and predictions):
George W. Bush is a Machiavellian genius.
The American Electorate no longer believes in the separation of Church and State.
Additional countries will soon exercise their right to pre-emptive warfare.
The wealth gap will continue to widen, with historically predictable results.
Europe will start re-arming at top speed while trying to stifle an emerging radical right.
Iraq will be a much better place four years from now.
Russia will be a much worse place four years from now.
America will learn to perfect its impression of Rome.
A list like that could go on forever, eh?
Hang on kiddos, it's gonna get a lot weirder, and more dangerous.
- k
Election Eve / Post Halloween
First off, people in the Midwest have shit tastes in costumes. I know I know, spend six years in San Francisco, and everything pales in comparison, but most of these people don't even try. I mention this only because I handed out candy and taunts yesterday to the unimaginative and greedy children (and some teenagers) and their tagalong parents. My point is that the costumes tended to be kids stuffed into Scooby dog-suits, kids strapped inside large plastic jack-o-lanterns, kids dressed up as whack rappers (note: dress up as Biggie or Shock G and I'd have opened my wallet for you), and more than a few wrapped in mangled bedsheets....boo.
Parents are busy, kids have lost their creative edge to television, and Kellogg's is putting evil shit into the cereal, and I understand all that, but come on! We had killer costumes when I was a kid-- headless horseman, 1000 variations of satan, creative witches...timeless stuff that you can take to any extreme. I'm not sure what's happened, there's plenty of dark stuff around Flint for inspiration. Then again, I might have felt a little strange handing out a handful of Twix to some pre-teen in a Bishop Magic Don Juan get-up with seven crack whores catering to his every....hell I'm not even going to try to finish that tangent, on to politics.
Speaking of pimps and whores, our election is tomorrow. Feels good to think it, eh? I've made a promise to myself, when a winner is actually announced, to swear off the news cycle for a month. If something happens that really warrants my attention, I suspect that I'll hear about it one way or another. Word does get around when it needs to, just like stuff tends to get done when it really needs to get done. But I need some time to nurture my optimism and concoct non-political content for this site, and there's a ton of real world shit as well...always is, what the hell.
I endorsed John Kerry because he's better than Bush or Nader, worse than half of everyone else, and the embodiment of my belief that government gridlock is a good thing right about now. Again, the super important stuff gets done when it needs too, and when it comes to Washington, I want some ballast (i.e. gridlock between the donkeys and elephants) to weigh against the weird shit that happens when someone comes across unfettered power and some strange ideas. For reference, please study the last four years.
I must also use this space to give Bush credit for something he might actually appreciate: George W. Bush is a Machiavellian genius. There is no way around this. He has beaten too many good politicians, rammed through too many extreme right-wing programs in a centrist nation, and manipulated too many facets of truth for this genius to be denied. I'm not sure if Bush has ever had the patience or curiosity to read The Prince, but I suspect that Cheney or Miss Laura might have come across an illustrated picture-book version during some bible study / campaign-stop and distracted George W. from his NASCAR-watching long enough to point out the eerie similarities between The Dubbya and The Prince....
- k