September 7, 2004
tin soldiers & nixon's comin'
9/7/04
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I'm on dial-up in a Motel 6 just outside Youngstown, Ohio, so I'll only have patience to send off a few words before I curse the heavens at 2.6 kilobytes a second (which is really slow, for those who know my alacrity with vulgarity). However, I have a few notes:
1. Cracker Barrel makes a habit of discriminating against gays and lesbians, and surely they'd lock the workers in the kitchen during a grease fire, and they are funded by right-wing wackos who speak in tongues. But FUCK they make a good pancake.
We were also wondering if they just invented those "early Americana" pieces of flair stuck on the walls. It seems all too easy to dream up a creme soda from 1907 and draw a caricature of an African American gentleman enjoying it lustfully.
2. I'm getting depressed about the new polls out, regardless of Bush's "fleeting convention bounce." Kerry's "W stands for Wrong" speech is cringe-worthy and he's rambling more than ever. The debates can't come quick enough, but at this current clip, I'm a little skeptical they'll do us any good. The one-thousandth soldier has just died in Iraq, and Bush is ahead by seven points because people think he's a folksy-folk.
You know that old cliché about "the best trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"? I think the best trick George Bush ever pulled was convincing the country he was one of them.
3. I have spoke of him oft before, but my Dad deserves much love from the blog - he turns 65 this afternoon. And he can still kick many an ass at tennis. Not mine, sadly, but many other asses.
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me, Kent and my dad build a trike, 1973. our pants ROCK!
You pants in the lower picture cannot hold a candle to the bedspreads inthe upper picture. My years on the road have seen me sleeping und just such bedspreads in several states. Years ago, someone in the hotel-furnishing business must have hired a whole village of bedspread makers in some third world country to make ten million of these things, all out of that same christmas/flower/stripe/semi-dayglo design. Ughhh.
Happy Birthday, Richard!
You and Tessa look very Lucy and Ricky Ricardo with those twin beds!
Have faith, the election isn't over yet.
Did they have one of those 25 cent machines that made the bed vibrate?
It's so cute how your dad looks like you.
Having just spent a weekend in Chapel Hill, it gives you a false sense of security. With the plethora of Kerry yard signs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers, a visitor would have thought the Univesity of John Kerry was playing football that day. Then I hear Dick's latest " a vote for Kerry is a vote for a terrorist attack" and come back to reality.
Unfortunately, the third world country that makes those bedspreads is located in rural NC... My sister worked in a factory in Henderson, NC making those godawful rags for a few years before she went back to get her GED...
Happy Birthday, Mr. Williams!
Greg: making hideous bedspreads still beats working at Wal-Mart.
Scruugs: maybe Edwards should retort with "a vote for Bush is a vote for everyone working at Wal-Mart."
Sorry Ian & Tessa, but shame, shame for eating at Cracker Barrel! You could have had better pancakes at Waffle House, of which there are many in Ohio. Waffle House rules!
http://www.wafflehouse.com/directoryframes.htm
(And shame on me for not quitting my job to join the Labor Day fun.)
DUDE: Youngstown?!? For all your continental criss-crossing, when are you ever gonna take the Southwesterly route outta NY and stay the first night for free in a not-far-off-the-westbound-interstate 200-year-old bucolic settinged log cabin -- with broadband, no less?
And Greg - A probable correction: Those bedspreads USED to be made in North Carolina. Now they're likely made in Mexico or China or Malaysia, you can pretty much bank on it.
I'm going to bite my tongue on the Cracker Barrel (and it hurts, it hurts), but I just can't let this other thing go: haven't you two read all those news reports that tell you that the first thing you are supposed to do when you get to the hotel is rip those bedspreads off of the bed and throw them in the corner?!
Germaphobically yours....
"Having just spent a weekend in Chapel Hill, it gives you a false sense of security. With the plethora of Kerry yard signs, t-shirts, and bumper stickers, a visitor would have thought the Univesity of John Kerry was playing football that day. Then I hear Dick's latest ' a vote for Kerry is a vote for a terrorist attack' and come back to reality."
Well yeah. Chapel Hill is a college town and college towns tend to lean to the left, espicaly near a liberal school like UNC, reagardless of how the rest of the state feels. Chappel Hill probebly looked like Gore heaven in 2000, unfortunitley the election night results were quite diffrent. Still NC is polling pretty closely, and John Edwards is a native and a grad of both NC State and UNC (undergrad and law school) so maybey we'll get lucky there, but i wouldn't bet the proverbial farm on it.