ongoing election coverage: 2008

now that i’ve started to keep a log of my off-line activities on the world wide web*, i've also made the decision to cover the presidential election of 2008 in this space. however, the only information that i’ll use is first-person accounts, and i certainly won’t make any effort to get those accounts, meaning that my perspective will be exceptionally localized.

in that vein, here’s some breaking news: no presidential candidate tried to contact me yesterday for my support or my opinion, and i still have yet to endorse a candidate. i thought briefly of the upcoming election on the way to the train, but i was distracted by a girl in a long black coat. more news on the election tomorrow.

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*sorry, lunchpails, but "blog" isn't a word, let alone a verb.

song of the day

"(Going to) Carolina in My Pants" by James Taylor. Great song.

GREASY SWEET MAYONNAISE!...

... that's the largest canary i've ever seen!

rolled up and forgotten, just leave it there...

i went to see natalia zukerman last night at mo pitkins, and she was good. her voice is flat-out beautiful, and she sure can play the lap steel, but there were times when i wanted her to be a singer instead of a singer/songwriter/musician. while i like her lyrics, there were times when i felt as if she found herself in the middle of a mediocre rendition of a mediocre song, so she threw in some scat to jazz it up. that sounds harsh, and the moments when the scat-like phrasing seemed truly natural were amazing, but that's the sense i got.

haunted house, though, really shoots out the lights, and she played milk + honey at my request. milk + honey reminds me of everything good that's every happened to me, which i mean as a pretty high compliment. "take off your cotton" is up there with "tremble nice" (in nini camps's "slide") as one of the simplest, hottest lines since janis. she closed with a cover of my favorite things, which i didn't like at first but which sort of exploded after the first verse.

but there's something that bothers me about that song, and i'm only going to say this one time: if whiskers on kittens are one of your favorite things, you're missing some of the best parts of the kitten. ok, so the song doesn't explicitly say that, say, paws are not one of [your] favorite things, or innocent curiousity, or a love of string, but i think it's implied. so wake up.

and while i'm at it, "drop it like it's hot" should really be "drop it like it's hot and you're holding it." jeez. it's incoherent otherwise.

"it gives me inspiration making counterfeit bills..."

you know those counterfeit detector pens that cashiers often use to insure that any large-denomination bills are legitimate? well, questions of their efficacy aside, i want one... for politicians.

i often wonder what people really believe. did hillary clinton really support the war from the outset, or was she a (female)-presidential-candidate-in-waiting who couldn't risk appearing soft? i know that rick santorum, may he rest in peace, really believed in fighting poverty, but what does john mccain think of the abortion issue? he's said that he favors a repeal of roe v. wade, and that he doesn't in the short- or the long-term (maybe there's some strange time deliniation in which he would support the repeal?). when these issues come up-- when every vote, every statement in every interview is scrutinized-- i want to know what people actually think. not to try to predict their actions, mind you: just to know.

i wish there were a counterfeit detection pen that i could apply to politicians when they're answering questions, or even to transcripts of their interviews. light mark, the statement is a true reflection of the person's feelings. dark mark, it's a lie, a concession, or a campaign ploy.

it just... i don't know how some people can sleep at night, and this would help me understand. does tom coburn really think that a minimum-wage increase would be bad for the majority of people, or is he just pandering to his base? the pen would tell me, and, well, i want to know.

(thanks to bobgeiger.com.)

well hello planet earth...

that's all.

a list of clients was discovered...

the latest in baseball's ongoing steroid problem is that young slugger gary matthews jr. was "allegedly on the customer list of Applied Pharmacy Services in Mobile, Ala., whose two owners have been indicted by an Albany County grand jury" for distributing narcotics and steroids. other people implicated include boxer evander holyfield and steroid poster-boy jose canseco.

my question is this: why do these places keep lists? maybe my memory-based system would collapse under the weight of hundreds of clients, and maybe i love secret codes more than the average guy. but couldn't they mystify or muddle things just a bit? ok, evander holyfield was listed under "evan fields", which is a start, but that looks more like lazy shorthand than intentional obfuscation. "evan" even had the same birthday as holyfield.

if i ever run a large-scale drug operation, i'll be sure that there are only a handful of people that could make any sense of my notes. and those people will be well-equipped to resist interrogation. come on, i'm sure you played cloak-and-dagger games as a kid, and now that you're a DRUG DEALER, it's time to draw upon those experiences. i'd give more information, but i don't want to reveal anything that will help cryptologists crack my coding scheme. but if you hold your face really close to the screen, you might see something that'll help. but only after a few minutes.

criminals, this tip is on the house.