Halloween is coming.
There are good costumes... and there are bad ones...
I'll leave it to you as to which is which...


Yeah.... a little disturbing...
I love halloween.

Defining Winning

So W had a press conference on Wed - one that i was watching while chatting with jake and cursing at the TV... but I really just couldnt turn it off - because I just needed to know what the guy is thinking.

Why Bush Thinks We're Winning

He really has a very simplistic view of things - it's as if someone gave him a couple lines from the Prince as a mantra and he's taken them to heart. I almost feel bad for him - I'm beginning to believe he really is just too stupid to understand what he's done. I'll be glad when the troops are pulled and maybe, in a couple generations, this will all calm down enough that the people of the region dont hate us.

Why is it that this never seemed to work out for me...

all the women I've ever known are as uppity as Harold Ford

Image of the Day

A link to the talented Sheharzad Arshad's work over at Deviant Art... a site that should be supported. It's tough being an artist out there - I know, I've had a few on payroll from time to time - and they struggle so hard to balance that creative need with the whole 'i have to eat' thing. It's that reason I push for things like Cosanti wind chimes for xmas and bought several hand painted Thankga from India. Artists get so little support these days - it's really important to put money into community theatre, high school drama clubs, and these sorts of cottage sites, because otherwise they'll end up in jobs they hate, spend the rest of their lives inking people, or making fan-service heavy anime in some sleazy low-light backroom.

sigh...
i'm sure you've heard about Rush and his 'Michael J Fox is faking his illness' crap...
but you gotta SEE him as he delivers it...

i hope everyone out there who's got someone with Parkinson's in their family will see this...
and see exactly how respectful of those with such a terrible debilitating disease these assclowns are...

they will do anything to get elected...
trash anyone...
abuse anyone...
lie cheat steal...

ends justify the means to these people - and the ends are wholly and utterly 'maintain power' so our friends can continue to plunder the public wealth of this great nation

i wish there were some way to wake these lockstep voters up... ask them a question like 'Who Would Jesus Torture'... but no - they're a generation of lost souls who simply dont care about anyone or anything but themselves... a generation of Alex P Keatons (sans Parkinson's)

And one from the wayback machine...

'On the verge of chaos'
or so Sen Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) describes Iraq.
hmmm - with people taking over whole cities in different parts of the country and the civilian death toll rising - is there some point at which we officially reach 'chaos'? or is this another one of those idiotic Fox/CNN "?" headlines... "Iraq, Verge of Chaos?"

The thing that really gets me going now are the hordes of assclowns that say 'yeah, all you ever do is complain - what kind of solutions do you have!!!' as if by electing democrats that somehow puts the onus of resolving this nightmare successfully on someone else's shoulders. If the mother of a child is killed, the question isn't who has the better plan for resolving the question of making the kid's lunch in the morning. Iraq is broken and just because the king's horses aren't putting it back together doesn't make it Bill Clinton's fault. Broken. There's no changing the Met lineup card so they can win the world series... they LOST... and Bill Clinton is not responsible. Iraq WILL be a source of terrorism for generations... it WILL be a destabilizing influence in the region... it WILL be a horrible human tragedy that will involve not thousands but millions if not tens of millions of deaths... and it's the people who voted for George Bush that are responsible. You want an answer? elect Fred Phelps president... he'll solve the problem for you.

Here's one for the 'man up, bucko' crowd...

The army is reporting 16% of troops coming back are being tagged as victims of post-traumatic stress - you know, the 'my best friend blew up' or 'i shot a 3 yr old' stuff... things people probably need some time to work out if they're going to get any semblance of themselves back from the warzone.

Well the army has a new answer to all that. In the face of lowered recruiting standards and questionable troop levels - the army is enacting a 'face your fears' approach to PTSD. It's as if Frank Burns were in charge.

Once again frontline was a killer show last night.
Read the extended transcripts for some amusing anecdotes... such as:

It was a bunch of young kids -- had no experience managing finances -- who
were given the task of running Iraq's budget. It turned out that this group of
kids who had come over together couldn't quite figure out why they'd been
chosen. They finally discovered that what had tied them together was that they
had all applied for jobs at the Heritage Foundation, this conservative think
tank in Washington.

What happened was that the hiring was done by the White House liaison to
the Pentagon, an office of the Pentagon political appointee. This office served
as the gatekeeper. Instead of casting out widely for people with knowledge of
Arabic, knowledge of the Middle East, knowledge of post-conflict reconstruction,
they went after the political loyalists and canvassed the offices of Republic
congressmen, conservative think tanks and other places where they knew they
would find people who would be unfailingly loyal to the president and to the
president's mission in Iraq.

The hiring process involved questions that would have landed a
private-sector employer in jail. They asked people what their views on Roe v.
Wade were, whether they believed in capital punishment. A man of Middle Eastern
descent was asked whether he was Muslim or Christian. People were asked who they voted for for president.

…

The civilians at the CPA, including many of these young 20-something
Republican loyalists who came, regarded the soldiers as their errand boys --
their drivers, their couriers, their coffee fetchers. We're talking people who
were soldiers in their 40s and people who were majors and colonels being forced
to work for these young kids and being very disrespected.

Iraq gave up the ghost a year ago - so when you see reports from the middle east, take a cue from Clayton Williams and just relax and enjoy it.

off to montreal...
should be fun...
might even be productive...
(like that ever happens)

i'll post on the state of the industry when i get back - something i'm not sure i've ever really done

For the love of god...

Went into town to get my hair cut and attend a school function with jake and mel. School plays are not places where melodrama really belongs - unless the actors are really really damnably bad - and in this case that just isnt fair. The golden mask players werent half bad - in fact, the lead actress was remarkably good for the fact that i was watching a 17 yr old (yes, i'm getting to be an old man). The actual choice of material though - dear lord - it was painful. And the timing one expects in HS drama - ie slightly longer pauses than one might find in performances by older more experienced actors - exacerbated that problem tremendously. By the climax you felt like, well, imagine Cat's Cradle only 600 pages... a long long grinding of the axe...

note: i've seen a lot of crappy high school drama in my life - hell, i married a high school drama star (crappy or not i'll leave to you) - but this was better than most - and i really mean it when i say that the lead actress should keep at it, i think she could be good.

Still dont think mel will invite me back... one too many Jennifer Garner comments ;)

Foley...
lets see...
first it was 'this is a democratic conspiracy'...
then 'he's an alcoholic, it was the whiskey talking'
then 'democrats knew about this and did nothing... and sat on the story until the election'
then 'republicans werent informed - and even if they were they told foley to stop doing this crap'
then 'it's all these 'beasts' fault...'
now it's 'it was all a joke gone awry...'

you ever notice that republicans are never at fault for their actions?

must be nice to live in a world where you can do no wrong... where that girl in the short skirt wanted it no matter what she said at the time... where that child in the corner was at fault for tempting you... where those 60 baghdad citizens who showed up dead in the morgue last night (or the night before) are just a comma in the grand march to freedom.

makes me sick...

Be Afraid
(edit to remove autoplaying film)