xtcian

fifteen tons

9/29/08

Today was that day, perhaps the one you're asked about many years from now, questions from your kids forced to study economics and realizing something huge happened when they were still children. The best answer I'll conjure up is something like "man, I dunno – it was complicated."

As best I can tell, this is what happened (and please, if I'm getting this wrong, please correct me):
1. People without any real money bought houses they couldn't afford.
2. They could do so because banks were lending them money with no downpayment and crazy low interest rates and no stringent credit checks.
3. The banks figured they could do this, because housing prices always go up.
4. Now the banks have shitty loans, which they sell to investment banks on Wall Street who figure they can make a buck off them too – because housing prices always go up.
5. The banks then sell these shitty loan mortgages to everyone else looking for a safe investment, rating them misleadingly, and using offshore accounts so nobody could see what they were up to. Who cares? Housing prices always go up!
6. Housing prices don't go up. In fact, the bottom kinda falls out.
7. People who ultimately bought these "safe investments" wonder where the money is, but all the ORIGINAL homeowners (from number 1 above) have foreclosed. The banks say to their disgruntled customers, "well, we never promised you a rose garden."
8. The truth comes out, and all these banks – and everyone associated with them – lose stock value so rapidly that the shareholders revolt.
9. Now there's no more money and no more credit being given. Without credit, the entire financial sector loses their oxygen, and the whole fucker slams to a halt.
10. The Government ponders a bailout plan to shore these banks back up and get credit flowing again.
12. The bailout plan fails because some Republicans believe it goes against their small-government philosophy, and some Democrats believe it wouldn't actually change the way these banks behave, it would reward the people who fucked up, and the taxpayer wouldn't share enough in future earnings.

Then the Dow falls off a cliff. Is that basically what all of you believe happened? If not, what is your take? And what happens now?

אני אוהב גבינה

9/28/08

HAPPY ROSH HASHANAH!

Back to blogging tomorrow, but I just want to list a few things I like about Jewish people:

- the religion tends to emphasize excellence, and values intelligent analysis
- the essence of Judaism is enlightenment through constant questioning, rather than having doctrine beaten into your skull
- they don't proselytize, in fact, they don't care if you become Jewish or not
- the youngest person at the Seder gets to ask questions, leading to discussion rather than sermons
- they could have stopped at Marc Chagall, Isaac Asimov and George Gershwin, but continue to give the world a wildly-disproportionate number of the greatest writers, artists, musicians, scientists and thinkers that ever lived
- the Jewish chicks in my prep school were super hot. What was a lapsing Mormon kid to do?

je suis un snob? oui, d'accord

9/25/08

I'm off this morning to Utah with my entire extended family – all 103 of them – to attend my Auntie Donna's funeral in Provo. All of my brothers and sisters (except Kent) are staying at the Comfort Inn, so if you want to come visit us by the bizarrely-overchlorinated pool, be our guest.

Just one thing to put up here today: I'm sure many of you have watched this already, but if not, it's a doozy. I personally dare all conservatives on this blog, whose opinions I do respect (profanity to the contrary) to tell me why they're still comfortable with this selection:

sorry about the quick ad at the beginning, but "The Mentalist" is actually not all that bad

cheating at solitaire

9/24/08

You gotta admire John McCain, you really do – he's willing to throw every single piece of spaghetti at the wall in a desperate hope something might stick. In a way, he's doing exactly what I was talking about a few days ago, when the (admittedly not-popular) topic was "using a few seconds of chaos in order to achieve goals not usually offered to you".

His handlers, which have to include Rove and whatever else he could scrape off the pus-encrusted scabs of late-20th-century neo-con think tanks, must think the only way out of their electoral mess is a synthetic game-changer.

You don't need me to parrot the current talking points of election punditry, but the last time he did this (Palin), he succeeded in scaring the shit out of every person in America who believes in science, as well as energizing all the Repubs camping in their bomb shelters. Like most junk food, Palin gave everyone a Hostess Ding-Dong high for a few hours, but the instant hangover was a bitch. Now she actually lowers his poll numbers among independents, and her net favorability is down 16 points overall (according to... wait for it... Fox News!)

So what do you do? If you can't change yourself, change the world. At this point, the only way McCain can poke open a window in the darkness is to create chaos where there was none before, and hope against hope something bizarre happens in his favor. It's actually the smartest thing he could try, given the current immutability of the race, but in this gambit, he has to roll a hard eight, and it's not looking particularly good. Trying to cancel the debate plays into a lot of problems he has already, and nobody in their right mind actually thinks this is anything but a ploy.

color-treated microscopy of Ritalin

But it does play into something I'm dealing with personally right now. I've waxed honorific about my various psychological disorders on these pages, necessitating certain drugz like Celexa and Dexedrine, but lately I've had to come to terms with a universally important question: Exactly how much do you need to change in order to fit into the world? Or, more aptly, how much of the world do you need to change in order for it to fit you?

I've been in therapy for a while, I'm taking all the drugs I'm willing to take, and still, this summer, I cratered. What I've begun to realize is that my peculiar brand of ADD will never be totally fixed, and if that's the case, I need to alter my environment as much as I can.

Many of the new books on kids with ADD actually de-emphasize drug use, suggesting instead that parents create a schedule and a household that plays to their child's strengths. Simple stuff: no tasks over 20 minutes, lots of play switching, and takin' trips. I know this raises the cackles of old-school parents and bootstrap-pullers who think that's a lot of prissypantin' fagotry and kids already get too much of what they want, and they should be forced to play ball for their own good.

That's the kind of thinking that made me the fucking mess I am, thanks. People who don't have depression and don't have ADD (which leads inevitably to depression) don't get it, and they never will. They should be thankful; they should consider it one of their grandest blessings.

Anyway, I'm going try as hard as I can to adapt my mind for the world around me, but I'm also going to have a clean understanding of my limitations. I'm also going to have a fearless grasp of my requirements. I won't get into specifics, but... coming to grips with who I am – rather than trying to drug it into submission – has been a real burden lifted.

I share nothing with John McCain, I think he's lost his moral riptide, and I hope he loses by twenty-one percentage points. But we are both trying variations on the same strategy: if you can't fix yourself, fix the game.

putting too fine points on it

9/23/08

Hey, this may be a stupid question, but do all of you know who your Congressional representative is, or even what congressional district you live in? It's easy enough for us: the awesome Kirsten Gillibrand beat John Sweeney (y'know, the arsehole who coordinated the Republican goon mobs that flummoxed the recount in Florida 2000, while finding time to go to frat parties in his fifties and by the way – according to a 911 call – was beating his wife) in New York 20th district last time around. She's become quite a sensation, as I'll detail later in October.

But because I'm an out-of-touch elitist, we also "live" in two other places: an apartment in Brooklyn that we sublet to a pirate named Jack, and our house in Venice, CA that we rent. Apparently the Park Slope place is in New York's 11th district, first represented by the scalawag Beriah Palmer in 1803, the ruthless William Randolph Hearst in 1903, and now helmed by the affable Yvette Parker.

Hearst was a Democrat. How crazy is that?

shaded area: CA-36; non-shaded: CA-30

Finding out our district here in LA was a little harder – the map seems to imply that our bedroom is in California's 30th district, and Lucy's bedroom is in California's 36th district. That means Lucy's congressional representative is Jane Harman, who once ran for Governator back in the crazy late '90s.

Jane Harman is married to Sidney Harman, the founder of harman/kardon Inc., coincidentally the maker of our home stereo, which Lucy likes quite a lot, especially when we watch the Tar Heels with stereo sound.

Somehow, after this research, I have a more steadfast handle on my situation.

How about you? Know your district? Like your rep? Planning on doing something about it?

vas deferens of opinion

9/22/08

On deadline for a few script pitches, so today will be a CODE WORD question: What is your FAVORITE part of your own body, and also your LEAST FAVORITE?

You can be anonymous, as always.

But I got great tits, just sayin'.

well shake it up now, all you've got

9/21/08

I mean, you have to believe, even in oddly desperate times such as these, that the difference between those who survive and those who fail is not a matter of predestination, but an understanding that when a huge tree falls, something else will get the sunlight. If this is the biggest implosion of the American economy since the Depression, and things are now going to be fundamentally different, then there must be a way you can benefit from the chaos.

In every plot, there is an "inciting incident" that allows the rest of a story to take place. Even in your own lives, a distraction is created, and you find that you can slip past the doorman, but only if you act within two seconds. Think of the stories about prisoners of war, stories that exist only because the order broke down for a few minutes, escape was glimpsed, then seized.

If it were up to the people that have everything, there would be no variance to the established order. They would continue to say "Twas Ever Thus" to enforce The Way Things Are, and they'd guilelessly sail on forever in an unending, smooth glide, uninterrupted by turbulence or rear-view mirrors.

They will continue to have almost everything, even in an upheaval, so resentment is a futile option. But in times like these, the special privileges that used to be open only to them can be pinched by you, oozing through the cracks and chasms of a superstructure that has been suddenly upended.

The writers' strike made 2008 a bizarre year in Hollywood, with lots of doomsaying and fear, but we chose to believe that when the status quo got throttled, there might be a way for us weirdos to sneak in. If the stock market were to crash again, maybe you make a little play on something that takes off when times get better. And maybe after eight years of the worst President in history, our collective misery will rewrite the rules long enough to elect an African American with a funny name as our leader.

I mean, you have to hope that you stay flexible and land on the right side of history, right? You have to be a survivor. Let old ideas fear the reaper; Shiva may be the Destroyer, but he also makes all things possible.

celestial kingdoms

9/18/08

Idonna Richins in 1941

My Great Aunt Idonna died this morning, known more affectionately to all of us as Auntie Donna. She was our last great matriarch from that generation, and though she was the childless sister of my grandma, she was in many ways closer to all of us than my Grandma was. She'd been ill for a while, seemingly recovered twice, and then, today, just gently let herself go.

Every single person in America has a personal story about their "crazy family", so I shan't bore you with any of the stories (like the time Auntie Donna and Grandma got a Super 8 camera with a manual zoom lens, took it to Venice, Italy, and when we all watched the footage, many of the grandchildren got motion sickness and threw up). Donna was a little more complicated anyway, capable of subtle mean-spiritedness and jubilant love separated by mere seconds.

One of the best descriptions of her came from my brother Kent, writing in 1995:

Auntie Donna... is one step shy of Boddhisattva. She's always direct about drawing her limits with people, but doesn't harbor resentments at length. And when it comes to writing style, she is Joycean in the extreme, even as her subjects are mundane. Sentences roll on for 40 or 50 words or more, and subjects, objects, tenses and verbs bob in a sort of goats head stew. Reading a letter from her is like smoking a half-gram of strong hashish early in the morning.

The cool thing is, if Auntie Donna had read that, she would have burst out laughing. One thing that generation had, including my grandma, was irrepressible self-awareness. I always wondered if the Depression and growing up on a spit-dry farm in Colorado could blanch certain hang-ups straight out of your system.

with her at the family reunion, Altamont, UT, August 2005

She and I had our run-ins, most notably the summer of 1986, when I lived in her garage bedroom for three months. She found my work ethic intolerably soporific, but she really got angry when she discovered I'd eaten some of the Wheat Thins out of her Mormon apocalypse food stash. I kept vampiric hours and borrowed her car endlessly. Years later I finally realized what an entitled brat I'd been, and apologized profusely.

She smiled, would have none of it, barely remembered it, and as she aged into her mid-to-late eighties, much of her trademark fret and naysaying melded effortlessly into being the sort of grandparent that my actual Grandma – having so much fish to fry of her own – couldn't. She let me use her house for my first short film, which is how Sean and Jordana got together; I like to think Barnaby is a product of their initial courting, surrounded by precepts of the Gospel and foreign teddy bears.

Lucy and Donna, July 2006

Auntie Donna was the first truly old person Lucy ever met, and while the Lulubeans will have only the faintest recollection of her in her later years, I like to think she inherited a small portion of her opinionated feistiness from her great-great Aunt. My extended family may hold fast in a LDS belief system that is fiercely patriarchal, but between my mom, her sisters, my grandma and Auntie Donna, there is no better set of women who could show a young girl how to forge through a hundred years whether a man was helping you or not.

the last time we saw her, Glendora, CA, April 2008

Bye, Auntie Donna. We really loved you.

make it work, people

9/16/08

For those of you who don't watch "Project Runway", don't worry – I'm just using it as example, but damned if it isn't a good one. I'm continually amazed at how people act so foolishly inappropriate when the rules of the game are so obvious.

So this chick Terri on the show had the same job as the eight other contestants: design a dress based on your sign of the Zodiac. Eight of the eliminated contestants showed up to help the remaining eight execute their ideas, and Terri was given Keith, an ex-Mormon with issues. Terri LOATHED Keith, and now she bemoaned her fate, even though he seemed to be compliant and willing to help.

Instead of making the best of it, she shut him completely out of the process, so he went to sleep on the couch in the "Project Runway" foyer.

Fast-forward to the end [SPOILER], where Terri's dress has been singled out as not particularly good by the judges... and the first thing she does is throw Keith under the bus, claiming he abandoned her. Keith fights back – he had nothing more to lose – and by then, the judges are pretty much disgusted with the whole thing.

Thus, Terri is booted off the show, just one elimination away from having her clothing line featured at Bryant Park. Worse yet, her dress wasn't even that bad, but the judges look at designing as a "collaborative process" and she obviously sucked at it. In essence, she torpedoed her own career because she couldn't simply come to an agreement with Keith, whereby they would smile for the cameras, say "thank you, Michael Kors!" and move on.

Tim Gunn, genius

What makes this episode of "Project Runway" so interesting? Because you see the same thing play out in front of you time and time again. So much of life is a motherfucking game and you either play along with it, or you turn yourself into a problem. I see it every time I fly: someone at the security gate is trying to get through with a giant jug of hand lotion, and IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Play the game, lady! Move this line along!

At all my regular jobs, especially in the dot-com days, I'd see people fighting for little victories that they would win, but at a cost of months of ill will. Very intelligent folks would expend energy on tasks guaranteed not to be appreciated, leading to resentment on all sides.

Play the game! Or, more aptly, take Michael Jordan's advice: "KYP! Know Your Players!" In other words, don't whip a gorgeous no-look pass to a 7'6" guy with hands of concrete.

Here in Hollywood, it's something you need to take to heart every day. You may be crafting gorgeous scripts; you may put in little turns-of-phrase that exalts the writing into the heavenly canon... but if the plot takes place in the kitchen of a fancy restaurant or at a busy newspaper, you obviously didn't read This Year's Rules and you're not playing the game.

By no means should this be confused with "mindlessly accepting every hand you're dealt" or "walking in lockstep with the status quo". There's still plenty of opportunity for bloody insurrection – just not in the "10 Items or Less" line.

I'm sure this concept can be twisted politically, so that Republicans can say "Hey, we're just playing the game! Don't come crying to us! We don't make the rules!" In some ways, I'd have to agree, except that "playing the game" only makes moral sense if entire swaths of people aren't vilified in the process. The Willie Horton ad worked, and perhaps the gay-hating referendums of 2004 did too, but both were pretty bad for America.

I also take exception for the denigrations of things I actually love – like music and basketball – by those who call everyone else a "playa hata". When the actual music and the actual basketball starts to suffer, then "the game" has become something else entirely, something that usually makes me cry on my pillow in a burst of effete, inconsolable snobbery.

But everything else? Play the game, fuckers! Stop trying to turn left from the right-turn lane! That suitcase is not going to fit in the overhead bin, asshole! Quit baiting the guy who signs your goddamn paychecks! Pass it to Serge Zwikker where he can actually catch it! And for god's sake, unless you're Picasso, smile nicely, survive and advance!

door county, USA

9/15/08

About a year and a half ago, I was ready to stop writing this blog, because it wasn't making me feel any better, I was getting self-conscious, and pretty much everyone I knew had stopped blogging (except for a stalwart few, especially when the Gribster tries absinthe). If I was going to keep going, I had to give myself some new guidelines, and one of them was NO MORE TALKING ABOUT THE BLOG ON THE BLOG. So you'll have to pardon me, because there are few more guidelines I'd like to put forth.

- Number one, I'm so fucking angry all the time I can barely speak about politics without rending my garments. I had largely recovered from much of my GWB-inspired rage, but the floodgates re-opened when S. Palin denigrated community organizers – not once, but twice – in her RNC acceptance speech. That particular brand of cruel smugness is responsible for so much misery in this country, and it brought back everything I'd sublimated about Republicans.

- As such, this blog is going to be chock full of swear words and deeply offensive language for the next few weeks. Will it be my finest moment? Will Lucy read this years from now and burst with pride? Probably not. Too bad. I'm sorry, future Lucy! Oh, and do your homework!

- Time and time again conservative commenters have referred to my words here as "talking down to Everyday Joes, which is why the Republicans win". This sentiment does several things: first, it's an admission by those very conservatives that their votes come from people so stupid that they'll make decisions based on who hurt their goddamn feelings.

Secondly, it's a cheap tactic designed to catch progressives in a double-bind: we're too weak-willed and pusillanimous to come out swinging... but if we do, we'll alienate small-town Americans! Thanks, really, but fuck off. People who vote for strictly emotional and irrational reasons deserve to be shamed, and shamed ritually and publically.

Thirdly, you're giving me a lot of credit. We get a shitload of hits here at xtcian, mostly people looking for Misty May's arse or a new set of Jarts™, but I'm fairly confident my political rants will not trickle into the Johnson family computer nook in North Platte, Nebraska.

- Relatedly, my old friend (and excellent lead guitarist) Schultz wrote "If you cannot see that you are blinded with your own hatred, then you have far bigger problems that this election." Well, I've been pretty up-front about having problems bigger than this election, but I don't think any Republican can fathom what it's been like to sit helplessly through the last eight years.

And don't give me the "now you know how we felt under Clinton" canard: Clinton never gutted everything you ever stood for, then smirked as you writhed in misery. He was more a friend to you than you've chosen to remember, and he also fattened your bank account into a complacency you've only just snapped out of.

So I would put forth that if you're not blinded by rage right now, you're not paying attention. This blog is a place where a few people can congregate to commiserate or argue against that rage.

- One last piece of business: I will no longer tolerate the argument that Sarah Palin is equally qualified to be President as Barack Obama. You Republicans should be bathing in shame, not just for nominating her, but for the act of convincing yourself she isn't a deluded, cynical DISASTER. When your party leaders said she was well-versed in foreign affairs because Alaska was close to Russia... weren't you embarrassed? Or does that mean Obama gets credit because his Great Lakes touch Ontario, Canada?

It'd be funny, except that it so isn't. Even mentioning her cringe-inducing resumé – which includes visiting Ireland while her plane refueled – in the same breath as Obama's completely minimizes everything he fights for. Obama already has the ear of the rest of the world, while Palin is still trying to pronounce "nuclear" – which had to be spelled phonetically on her teleprompter.

So to hell with your first amendment rights: I've allowed you to make that specious case several times on these pages, and I'm done. If someone compares Palin's experience to Barack Obama again, I'm going to delete it.

- Oh, and I love you all. Any other blog guidelines you can offer will be welcome.

me vote pretty one day

9/14/08

Lemme see if I got this straight.

In 2000, we said George W. Bush was ethically-bankrupt liar who would be a disastrous President. We were right, and you were wrong.

As the protests against his illegal ascension to the White House thinned, we were told to stop being "sore losers" and that everyone had "Clinton fatigue" anyway. My wife screamed to a sparse crowd in Times Square "BUT SOMETHING MIGHT HAPPEN WHILE HE'S PRESIDENT!" She was right, and you were wrong.

In the lead-up to the Iraq War, we did everything we could to stop it. Many of us believed there were no weapons of mass destruction. We said it was the stupidest war at the stupidest time in history. We were right, you were wrong.

We said that our job in Afghanistan was completely unfinished, and that the Taliban would come back. You, however, fought to redouble our efforts in Iraq. We were right, you were dead wrong.

We begged everyone not to vote for Bush again. We said that he was a miserable failure and that his worst was yet to come. You chose to believe lies about the military record of the Democratic nominee, then made Bush our president again. We were right, you were wrong.

We bemoaned a non-functioning government where plum positions were given to old cronies who passed an ideological test. You didn't care. Then a hurricane came and almost wiped away a major American city while those same cronies did nothing. We were right and you were wrong.

We told you that laissez-faire economics doesn't work. We told you that corporations have no compunction and need to be regulated for our own good and their own good. You then brought us to the greatest meltdown in modern Capitalist history. We were right, you were wrong.

Now you've got a nominee for President who has utterly lost his moorings and has no discernable economic or military plan that is any different from his predecessor. A heartbeat away, you've nominated a Vice President who is criminally unprepared for office, and has shown the benchmarks of being a mean-spirited, revengeful twit who is impervious to facts. Listen up: WE ARE TELLING YOU THAT THEY ARE GOING TO BE ANOTHER DISASTER.

On almost every issue, our record – that is, the record of progressives – has been vindicated as truth. Nobody likes sour grapes, or someone who says "I told you so," but you know what? Suck my fucking balls. This is our country too, and we're correct so often that we might as well open up a line of Tarot Card Kiosks and JUST STATE THE OBVIOUS.

So I gotta ask... how the fuck do you do it? How do you convince people to make the wrong choice again, and again, and again? You con people into voting against their economic self-interests, you convince Southern families to offer their kids as cannon fodder for a useless war, and you make Americans vote for nominees that make the rest of the world cringe with fear, rage and embarrassment.

Seriously, what's your trick? Ticklin' the prostate?

old diaries wistfully reread

9/11/08

Just watched the mighty Heels dismantle the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers (game played only a few blocks from the Budster!) and the long undulations of a football game allowed my mind to wander for a while... to today's CODE WORD question.

I used to have a theory that the measure of a man – and a woman – could occasionally be measured by their ability to stay friends with the people they once dated. Obviously, it's been eight years (almost to the day) since I stopped dating anyone except my superheroine better half, but there was a time when I was pretty good at morphing the romantic part into a long-term friendship.

It could be said I massively screwed that up a couple of times, one in particular (and you know who you are!) but even that tide has turned due to the tincture of time. My question is this: do you remain friends with old girlfriends or boyfriends? SHOULD you do so? And is there somebody out there, someone you dated, that nags your conscience? As always, you can be anonymous...

flesh you so fancifully fry

9/10/08

Just when you think they couldn't sink any lower, the Republicans have come out with an ad saying that Obama's one accomplishment in education was sponsoring a bill to teach sex education to 5-year-olds. It's accompanied by leering photos of Obama himself, a juxtaposition meant to imply that he secretly lusts after kindergartners. Go see it for yourself if you don't believe me – I'm not linking to that bile.

Combine that with the "9/11 Tribute Video" shown at the Republican National Convention, and you've got a group of people who have taken out their moral compass and urinated on it. These assholes don't believe in America, they only believe in Americans that vote Republican. They have planted a GOP flag atop the charred remains of 2,700 of my fellow New Yorkers, and on behalf those of us who were actually there, I'd like to cordially tell them to eat shit and die.

I used to have a grudging respect for John McCain, even openly thought his top-secret plan to run with John Kerry in 2004 was a good one (shit, the only running mate scarier than Lieberman is Sarah Palin) but this is it. I don't care how long he sat in a goddamn prison forty years ago; the man is ethically unfit to hold the Presidency and is a sick fuck to boot.

So, you might think, what is there to do besides write profanity-laced tirades on the internet? Get out there and change some minds if you can. Last election we went to Reading, PA and worked for Election Protection, a non-partisan group that helps poor people, the disadvantaged, and those with language barriers at the voting booth. Oh, and we also kept certain political parties from attempting shenanigans designed to scare brown people away.

Which is all well and good, but we're planning a search-and-illuminate mission somewhere well before Election Day. Until then, however, there's always money. And so, I've made another T-shirt with this graphic on the front:

it's available as a fitted tee, a cool women's cap-sleeve baseball style T, and the nice light colors shirt

They're over at CafePress, marked up $2 per shirt – not only will that $2 go straight to the Obama campaign, but I'll personally match $3 to every shirt sold. Thus every time you get a shirt, $5 goes to Obama. That's true for the "Road to Nowhere" shirts, and also the "Krzithead" shirts, cuz those are awesome too (and Dean Smith would have tacitly approved).

If anyone else has any ideas, send them along. Cute or profane submissions accepted!

you were a tender and callow fellow

9/8/08

We interrupt our Nobody's Ever Changin' Their Mind About Nothin'-Fest™ for some pics requested by various family members, of the current goings-on in our late summer's end. In no particular order, I grabbed these:

Lucy enters birthday party, stares longingly at inflatable trampoline tent
 
 

seconds later
 

 

Sean and I golfed in Myrtle Beach, SC last weekend – Lucy picked my shirt color
 

 

Jordana, Barnaby and Sean contemplate the ferris wheel in South Carolina as the rain begins
 
 

Lauren and I during the gig at Molly Malone's
 

 

my dad introduces the cellist at the Grove in Sonoma County
 
 

Sean, Tessa, Michelle and me at dad's birthday picnic
 
 

Lucy practicing her "insouciant lounge" for later career as a teen

Are you undecided?

Steve, here, Ian's big brother and webmaster. Ian's in Napa for the day and asked me to ask you readers to start a brilliant topic.

I'll start: Last night, the News Hour covered poll numbers that claim the presidential campaign is quite close, but with a large number of undecided voters, anywhere from six to fifteen percent of likely voters. That surprises me, because the two major tickets are so different in personality and policy.

Why are so many voters undecided so late in the campaign? What do they need to see or hear to make a choice?

1 nation, indivisible, except by 0

9/7/08

First off, I was asked by several readers to post a link to Anne Kilkenny's letter about Sarah Palin, since it adds more to the picture: Ms. Kilkenny was in Wasilla with Palin since the very beginning, and it's about the most reasoned, temperate and well-written document you'll find, should you still be sitting on the fence.

And while I'm in the mood for such temperate forbearance, I'd like to take some of the complaints about McCain/Palin and explain why they're total bullshit. No, I haven't gone soft – I just think the following items are fairly ludicrous:

McCain shouldn't be President because he needs his staff to tell him how many houses he has.
It was impossible not to love this one, since it played so well into the Republican narrative, but honestly, this was meaningless. What McCain should have said was "Cindy and I have been very lucky in our investments and have a few properties that generate income for our family – Cindy generally takes care of that side of our finances, and I'll have to get back to you about how many investments we have."

Case closed. Sure, it makes them sound rich, but it plays more into the American Dream. Hell, we own a place we don't live in, but the rental allows us to pay the mortgage and come back for great visits. But McCain screwed up his response and made it sound like he actually lives in seven houses and is too flush to know the frickin' difference.

John McCain is filthy rich; but then again, so was John F. Kennedy and FDR, and they were fantastic presidents. The whole idea that our candidates have to know the price of milk – I dunno, I've always thought that was horseshit. I'd rather they be fixing the planet than shopping for beets at Safeway.

Sarah Palin should be taken off the Republican ticket because she used her power to fire the chief of police who wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law.
At first glance, this seems like megalomaniacal bullshit from a revengeful queen, and yes, it probably was. However, the ex-brother-in-law in question is a fucking piece of work. He tasered his own 10-year-old stepson (on a dare, supposedly), was a excruciatingly rotten father who just finished his fourth marriage, threatened to kill Palin's dad, and drank on the job.

She may have acted unethically, and she may be censured for it, but I have to say, if someone in my family behaved like that dude, I'd have to be talked out of bashing the motherfucker's shins with a tire iron. Just sayin'.

John McCain shouldn't be President because he's too old.
If that's the case, we should also take Justice John Paul Stevens off the Supreme Court, get Barney Frank out of Congress, and stop listening to my mom. In general, I'm an ageist when it comes to older people because of their seemingly-intransigent views on blacks, women and gays, but unless you're Ronald Reagan and barely able to keep awake during war briefings, a President's age shouldn't matter.

The only scary part about a President McCain is the relative likelihood of his VP taking over the slot. Insert shudder emoticon.

John McCain cheated on his wife, Sarah Palin didn't strap her baby into the car seat, she kills wolves from planes, his grin resembles a skeletal death mask, etc...
Look, any or all of these details may reveal that your candidate once was – or still is – an asshole, but none of them are dealbreakers to me. Sure, I like hearing 'em in the hopes that it contributes to their loss, but deep down, I know they are useless barometers for leading the country. Even Palin's disheartening redneckism is anathema only to me and a few other snobs.

However, this I know: Sarah Palin wants to ban books. She wants to outlaw abortion even for rape and incest victims. She is an evangelist Pentecostal who believes Iraq is a holy war. She doesn't believe man is responsible for global warming and wants Creationism taught in schools.

McCain is never going to get us out of Iraq and is likely to engage us in more war. He has no substantive environmental policy at a time when we have a decade to avert disaster. He has become virulently anti-choice. He has zero economic aptitude and no plan to get us out of recession other than the same tax cuts that have destroyed the middle class.

Just so we're clear. Being a pinko, untrusting whiner, I'll look for almost any reason to hate a Republican - but when pushed into sobriety, it's really the simple things that remain most powerful.

horse needs a-floggin'

9/4/08

Before we wrap up the GOP's Hate Week™ and move on to topics less contentious, let's do two things: respond to conservatives who have made several statements in the comments section... AND, if you don't mind, the legendary GFWD has made a request that all regular commenters and lurkers answer his little questionnaire at the bottom.

Right. So I'm going to put the various right-wingers' statements in italics, and mine will be right after.

[re: my politics] "There's a name for people who feel no guilt about something for which they should... some folks are so certain of their own righteousness and the other side's inherent evilness, that they lose the ability to think straight... They are political sociopaths."

I'm sorry, but this was too hilarious not to repeat. For a Bush voter to say this to me was... I dunno, kinda priceless.

"I disagree with this blog on most things political, but I always respected Ian as a decent person. Stooping so low as to attack minor children in order to make cheap political points is despicable."

I write a personal blog and made it clear from the very outset that I was a big fucking asshole, and I also made it very clear that I have personal issues that lead me to find the Palin family... shall we say, unpalatable. But then again, I'm not running for the President of the United States, unlike your guy, who tells jokes about how ugly Chelsea Clinton was when she was thirteen.

"If Palin gets McCain elected, those who took the bait will have no one to blame but themselves."

Um, no, we will have no one to blame except people mentally bankrupt enough to vote for John McCain because of Sarah Palin.

"If Palin is so bad- why all the fuss? Shouldn't Democrats be rejoicing at this obvious and disastrous pick?"

No, because – through idiocy or shenanigans - she might actually win, and it's each party's responsibility to give us a worst-case scenario that isn't completely insane.

"if I were a woman, I would be insulted at the suggestion that serving as VP would somehow take away from her ability to raise her children. This is the kind of glass ceiling bullshit that the left would never stand for if there were a 'D' after Palin's name."

I agree, actually. That's true sexism.

"Snowmobiling and moose-hunting = redneck

Green indoor/outdoor carpet in the back of Clinton's El Camino = perfectly acceptable"

No - green indoor/outdoor carpet in the back of your El Camino is also redneck.

"Palin's state, 47th in population, is too small for her gubernatorial experience to matter

Howard Dean's state, Vermont, 49th in population, is no problem"

Please. Howard Dean was a Yale and Einstein College Doctor of Medicine graduate who governed Vermont for 12 years (2nd longest in history), and in doing so, lowered income tax twice while balancing the budget eleven times and instituting a universal health care program for children. Palin is not fit to carry Dr. Dean's lunch.

"Clinton gets a hummer in the Oval Office from an intern = it's just sex, none of our business
Palin's DAUGHTER gets knocked up = Palin is a rotten parent and will be a rotten VP"

No, not a rotten parent. A deeply hypocritical one.

"Clinton proudly works the system to avoid the draft = oh, come on, it's Vietnam - everyone did it!
Dubya joins the Air National Guard and Dan Rather destroys his career trying to rat GWB out"

Clinton was against the war and made no bones about trying to avoid it. Bush pretends to join, then can't be found for an entire year - gets his dad to fix the situation, then approves the Swift Boat attack on John Kerry, who actually risked his life for his country.

"HRC fires the entire White House travel office = power comes with the privilege
Palin fires a bureaucrat = scandalous!"

Hillary got in plenty of trouble for the travel office affair, and by the way, she was only First Lady. Sarah Palin is being considered for possibly running the country. Is that lost on you people?

"Dems sell nights in the Lincoln bedroom like it's Marriott = no problem!
Palin steers some pork to Alaska = dirty rotten scoundrel!"

No, again, she's just a lying hypocrite. She lied about her support of the Bridge to Nowhere, and then boasted she was leading the fight against earmarks, when there's written proof in her own handwriting about clamoring for... earmarks.

"Dan Quayle, with only 12 years in Washington, is too inexperienced to be VP in 1988
Barack Obama, with only 1/3 the time in Washington as Quayle, is fully ready to be prez!"

Again, apples and oranges. Dan Quayle was a moron.

"After what Palin's been through this last week I think she's earned the right to hit back a little, and the jab at a community organizer was no worse than the way Obama denigrated small town mayors."

Please show me one instance of Obama denigrating small-town mayors. Did you just make that up?

"where did [Palin] lie or utter a falsehood?"

Oh, where to begin. She lied about Obama's accomplishments, she lied about his tax plan, she lied about the Ketchikan bridge, she lied about earmarks... her campaign even lied about Bristol's pregnancy until it got too crazy.

"BHO was 'community organizing' with confessed domestic terrorists and felonious Syrian nationals."

Yep, you got him. That sounds like a flawless description of Barack Obama's post-graduate work. Man, you Republicans just can't fathom actually going inside poor neighborhoods and helping people less privileged than yourselves, can you?

"Isn't it just a teeny-weeny bit possible that Dems harbor a smidgen of fear that Palin could possibly conceivably occasionally perhaps on a good day resonate with some undecided voters?"

No, I think we harbor a hugey-wugey fear that Palin might end up running the country.

[re: the 2000 election] "You notice how Gore's inability to win his own home state is never mentioned."

It's probably mentioned about as many times as the fact that Al Gore beat George Bush by half a million popular votes.

"Ian... your blog is always charged and buzzing, even though you could benefit from a few Sunday Masses and some time spent as a small businessman ;)"

Actually, I've always wanted to start a place that served awesome espresso, super-caffeinated tea, free wireless internet and confusingly-expensive muffins.

AND NOW, YOUR REQUEST FROM MY ESTEEMED COLLEAGE, GFWD:
A plea: please detail (anonymously, if you must) an itemization of which specific factors are important to you and why you're voting for a particular candidate. The only catch is that you should also identify the following:
1. Age
2. Marital status and number of kids
3. Straight or Gay
4. Who they voted for in the last election
5. State or region
Thanks!

tracy enid flick

9/3/08

Okay, a third blog in a row about politics. It's going to be a political week on here, so if you don't like it, there's always Cute Overload. And thus...

The bar was set so low for Sarah Palin's speech that she could have taken two giant dumps on the podium and been praised for not taking a third. She read the words on the teleprompter – written by George W. Bush's speechwriter – with gusto, but offered nothing but tacky denigrations of Barack Obama's character, along with a litany of complete and utter falsehoods.

The depths to which this shit has sunk... do the Republicans at this convention know they are a culmination of every asshole from 1980s teen movies? All the guys are James Spader from "Pretty in Pink", and all the girls are Heather from "Heathers". In fact, every time Sarah Palin opened her mouth, I was reminded of why J.D. kills the football players – "they had nothing to offer except date rapes and AIDS jokes."

How fucking DARE she make fun of community organizers? They're the only people left in America who help those who've been abandoned by everyone else, and to hear this horrible woman demean them for laughs... frankly, I couldn't bear it. Besides her bizarre, psychosexual repetition of McCain's time spent as a prisoner of war, Palin said nothing to inspire people upwards, only taunts, lies, and jokes fed to the convention hall like gazelle meat to rabid lions.

In a way, tonight was calming. Because truly, if McCain/Palin wins an election over Obama/Biden, this country is so fucked as to warrant abandonment. If this guttersniping, lying marionette and her twisted, ghoulishly-grinning mentor are the people America wants, then the debate is over, les jeux sont faits, we know not to care anymore.

It was one thing that Bush won in 2000 – the Supreme Court, a confusing ballot, and Katherine Harris' purge lists made sure of that. It was another that he won in 2004 – thanks to America's 9/11 hangover and cognitive dissonance. But after all we know now, after everything has come to light, and seeing what these Republicans represent? It will mean that the country finally got too hopeless to be worth saving. And for those of us who care so passionately, there will be relief in knowing that it's over.

Yeah, yeah: I already hear the outcry. Of course there are some smart conservatives; many of them write on these pages. It's not you I'm worried about, it's the easily-duped well-meaning proletariats who have lost the ability – or desire – for critical thinking. And, of course, the drooling rednecks who are already chanting "don't let the door hit yer ass on the way out, you fucking faggot!"

I tell you, that's fine. Us elitists, you know, the ones with education, the ones that took an active interest in the world around us, the ones that flourished in the many-hued world of nuance and occasionally tried to make the world a better place - rather than hoarding as much as we could for ourselves and putting barbed wire and guns around it - We will opt out.

We might go to our own version of Coastopia, we might take our talents to another country. There will be a brain drain, the best and brightest fleeing to another place that doesn't make them sick to their stomach. Young idealists will opt out of politics, and then opt out of helping America do anything, and then, perhaps, opt out of the whole tribal idea of America itself. Giggle if you must, if it makes you feel better. That's cool. I could be wrong.

Speaking only for myself, then. If Sarah Palin and John McCain are elected to run the country, I'm more than happy to fuck off.

***
[UPDATE: VIDEO FOR YOUR PLEASURE (thanks, laffy!]

the palin drone

9/2/08

Okay, so my joke post was not appreciated by some of the commenters and a lot of you emailers. So let's dispense with the horseplay, and I'll tell you what I really think. Keep in mind that I am in no way affiliated with the Obama campaign other than voting for him – in fact, he says certain things are off-limits, but he's a greater man than I am, and this is my blog. Admittedly, it's a tiny lectern, but 'tis mine.

I wrote yesterday's post because, like they say, we laugh to keep ourselves from crying. In reality, I find the Sarah Palin choice to be so dangerously simpleminded, so criminally stupid, so insulting to the intelligence of American voters that McCain and his entire party should be fucking ashamed.

How DARE they put this person so close to the leadership of this country – you're telling me, in a world that has the possibility of loose nukes, economic collapse and the wanton subversion of the rule of law, that you're going to put Sarah Palin one bad-fall-down-the-stairs away from leading the United States of America? I'm sorry, but please FUCK OFF.

That shows such disrespect to our Founding Fathers that I wouldn't be surprised if the zombie skeletons of George Washington, James Monroe, and Alexander Hamilton crawled out of their graves in order to eat Karl Rove's brain. Sarah Palin's only executive experience before briefly governing our Least Populous State was being mayor of Wasilla, a town of 8400 people.

How many is 8400 people? Let's use last season's home Dook game as an example:

Some GOP loyalists actually implied she has foreign policy experience because she lives so close to Russia - by that logic, Republicans should have no trouble getting LASIK surgery from somebody who lived very close to an opthamologist.

She – and the people around her - are so chunderheaded that they say things like "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents." At the Republican convention, I heard a lady say "I think it shows real courage for Sarah to choose having a baby they knew had Down's Syndrome." Lost on all of these people are two words: "decision" and "choose". If Sarah Palin had her way, ALL WOMEN WOULD HAVE NO CHOICE, AND NO DECISIONS.

My personal feelings are ugly and unsubstantiated. I feel like I knew families like the Palins. I grew up with them in Iowa and Utah. The press-on nails, the mall hair, the easy invocation of Jesus, the wrathful patriarchy. The eldest daughter, who has zero intention of listening to her mother, has sex with the local star hockey player, a hunk of mullet-headed meat whose MySpace page declares "I'm a fucking redneck":

other quotes: "I like... fucking chilling, I guess." "Ya fuck with me, I'll kick your ass" and "I don't want kids."

Yes, these are the guys that'd routinely beat the shit out of me at school, they're the ones that make fun of faggots, they're the ones banging on the plexiglass windows during the Florida recount in 2000. One can't get too mad, though - this poor bastard Levi just underage-fucked his way into No More Fun With the Boys. No more "shooting the shit", no more hockey: as soon as the election is over, he's got an eternity of screaming babies, screaming wife and screaming grandparents hovering over him at the Applebee's in Juneau.

Do I have baggage? Fuck right I do. We all do. But I've had it with wingnuts telling me what I'm not allowed to mention in public discourse after the way they have savaged progressives and their families over the last ten years. Do not ask me to provide specifics; I am not going to line ducks up for you to shoot.

So there you have it: a middling, C-minus pro-lifer who wants to put creationism back in the schools, and believes the Iraq war is a mission sent to our soldiers by God. Her stance on family reeks of the worst kind of hypocrisy, and until very recently, she had no idea what the Vice-President even does. If I were a woman still stinging from Hillary's loss, I would tell John McCain's campaign to EAT SHIT.

This is proof that the ruling class of Republicans don't give a fucking fuck about America – this is just a game to them. Listen to them chortle at the convention about how the Sarah Palin choice got liberals in a tizzy. That's because to them, it's about the tizzy, not about America. It's about confusing, obfuscating, triangulating and just plain bullshitting. It's not about the country.

Fuck the whole lot of them. I have no desire to be a team player, I have no desire to be bi-partisan. I want Obama to win, and then I want to STICK IT to the other guys, keep twisting the knife until it hurts. I want them to be so thoroughly humiliated that their brand of thinking goes back into the Chest of Failed Ideas along with Stalinism, slavery and New Coke.

And yet, I do respect and am quite attached to the conservatives who comment here. All posts like these do is just bum all of you out. Which is why, when it comes to certain things, obviously a joke is much, much better.

and then the ghost dumpster delivers his witty catchphrase

9/1/08

Okay, that's a good start for this pitch: a down-and-seemingly-out Presidential candidate is not only facing an election year drubbing because of a toxic incumbent, but he just got shellacked by a fabulous political convention held by the other side.

A hurricane forms in the Gulf – eerily on the exact same date as another hurricane did three years ago, a storm that exposed the current Administration as a bunch of witless, cruel morons. And as luck would have it, this new hurricane is due to make landfall the day HIS convention starts.

What to do? Something bizarre. Something unimaginable. Time to throw away the playbook and scream out an audible.

The solution gobsmacks him: pick a young, bizarrely-inexperienced woman for vice president who looks like the girl wearing glasses in Adam Ant's "Goody Two Shoes" video. She's against abortion even in cases of rape, she was a member of a party that wanted Alaska to secede from the Union, she's a climate-change-denier, and she's ALL WOMAN.

Stuns the political world.

But here's the second act wrinkle: rumors are floating around that her 4-month-old child might not be hers. The rumors say it's a child belonging to her underage daughter – after all, the daughter had "mono" for 6-8 months during the same time. Plus, when our woman's "water broke", she was in Texas... and had time to hop a plane to Seattle, then got on another plane to a tiny hospital in Alaska with very few witnesses?

Oh, it just seems so crazy. But the rumor is gathering steam. There's only one thing for it: a TRUTH even MORE BIZARRE than the rumor. "Actually," the VP pick says, her daughter is "ALREADY PREGNANT." She's five months long, conveniently one month longer than her baby's current age.

Hypocrisy? Abstinence-only show to be bullshit? Sure, but they can weather it. In fact, it might even help. Maybe it revives the old guy's campaign.

But here's where our pitch gets good. It's something I call the TMF – the Triple Mindfuck. Good political and psychological thrillers always have a twist at the end, but the great ones have two.

The daughter's pregnancy isn't real... but she continues the pantomime. She disappears from public view – again – occasionally resurfacing to show a larger belly under an undisclosed number of sweaters.

Another baby, given up for adoption just before the daughter's fake due date, is found. She emerges on Christmas Day from the hospital with the new baby, marries her boyfriend, and the family – and country – is intact.

Think about it... the mother pretends to carry a baby that isn't hers in order to cover for the daughter. The daughter pretends to carry a baby that isn't hers in order to cover for the mother. It's Shakespeare, but since it ends with babies and marriage, that makes it a comedy!

Whaddya think?