I hate leaving my blog un-updated.  Unfortunately, I’m smack in the middle of a project that is taking a ton of my time. And the project is secret, so I can’t blog about it.

It has nothing to do with yellow cake uranium, and it has nothing to do with sleeper cells.  It does have something to do with Joanna’s (and my, she keeps insisting) business though, so I’m going to leave it to her to talk about on her blog (when she’s ready to do so) and I’d ask that if any of you know what it is you keep it to yourselves.

I’ll get back to some new shit soon though.  Joanna and I saw an amazing Joe Jackson show in Miami this past weekend (some of you may know that when it comes to artists and creativity he’s my hero), a blurry photo of which appears below (yup, we were about 15 feet from the stage), and I have a little something to say about it….so maybe later today or tomorrow I’ll put that up.  And I promise I’ll try and make it not suck.

Blurry? Yes. Awesome? Also yes. Click on it for a bigger version.

At any rate, I ain’t dead, I’m just under cover.  So don’t go ‘way.

I like monsters. I do.  And  I love music.  But I’m not so sure the two of them do a chocolate-in-my-peanut butter, peanut-butter-on-my-chocolate kind of a thing if you catch my drift.  Case in point?  Lordi, the Finish “heavy metal” (you’ll understand the quotes in a minute) band I saw on Conan last week.

The press shot is suitably creepy. In a stupid teenage bedroom poster kind of way.

Don’t get me wrong: bands that wear heavy makeup or costumes don’t automatically suck.  But for every New York Dolls (admittedly not in the same class, but they’re actually touring again!) or Kiss (the commercials for the upcoming Kiss shows at the Nassau Coliseum that ran during Midnight Special back in the mid-70’s actually disturbed me), there are dozens of Twisted Sisters.

Lordi, though, falls a miles short of even Dee Snyder’s band. I was flipping channels and heard Conan introduce them.  I thought I had heard of them; thought they might be one of the silly death metal bands with names like Cradle of Filth that I’ve seen on shitty television shows designed to scare the hell out of anyone with teenage children.

Not even close.  Lordi sounds like a bunch of talentless high school outcasts who huff cans of spray paint behind the arcade and talk about how bitchin’ satan is (”Dude, I love satan” “Dude, me too. The dark prince rocks.” “Dude, hell yeah, hail satan….we should start a band!” “Dude, fuck yeah!”).  The song itself sounded like a cross between something on a Best Buy salesman’s iPod and a keyboard-heavy hunk of radio sputum from a third-rate 80’s hair band.

There was one redeeming aspect to it though: the combination of how ridiculous the music was and how monumentally stupid they looked was fucking hilarious.   Hilarious enough that I taped it and showed it to Joanna in the morning, who got one of those “no way” looks on her face that are so much fun to watch other people make.  The masks are so heavy that the lips barely move, which made the bassist and guitar player look like Spridle and Chim Chim from the original Speed Racer cartoons whenever they sang backups.  Then there’s…well just look for yourself (by the way, what’s classier than taking a photo of your TV?):

Um, dude? You might want to flip through an American Sign Language dictionary sometime.

I have to assume the lead singer was trying to score points with satan by throwing up the sign of the goat; you know, the devil horns and all.  But what he’s doing in that photo there is signing “I love you”.  Which I guess is nice too.

Lordi gets 1 out of 5 bones.  And that one is for the laughs.

Oh, and because he loves us.

A lot of people have asked me how I did in my run for Jupiter Inlet District 5.  As expected, I lost - both of the other candidates are long time residents that put up a ton of signs and really worked their contacts.  I, on the other hand, posted to my blog and watched TV.

But I did get 18.4% of the vote, which means that 6,439 people colored in the little connecting line to vote for me.  Which is actually incredibly cool and a much larger number than I ever thought possible.  The fact that they probably did it because I was first on the list is irrelevant (sort of).

18% doesn't sound like much until you realize that's almost 6,500 people. I'm happy. And wasn't it nice of Biden to hold my hand?

Anyhow, so that’s how that went.  But now that’s it’s all over, I’d like to just take a moment to pass along my thoughts on the rest of what went down yesterday, some of which I’m pretty bummed  about. So let’s start with:

THE UGLY:

Two things happened in Florida that make me want to move.  Really.  I know some of you are calling me a drama queen right now, and others are comparing me to Alec Baldwin or some other silly douche.  But I didn’t say I am moving, I said these things make me want to.  And really, it wasn’t a big step from where I was in the first place.  But let me lay it out for you.

Florida, like California, allows amendments to the State Constitution to be voted on by state residents.  California calls them propositions, Florida calls them amendments.  Whatever you call them, it’s not a great idea.  Up until (I believe) two years ago, a simple majority was required for passage, but that year, thanks to an amendment I actually appreciated, the percentage required for passage was increased to 60. I could whine for a while about why this is such an stupid way to do anything, but you need only live in a state that operates this way to find your own examples.  For me, this year I have two: Amendment 1, and Amendment 2.

Amendment 1 was aimed at removing a chunk of Florida’s Constitution that was inserted in 1926 and allowed the Legislature to prevent people barred from citizenship from owning land.  It was, at the time, aimed specifically at Asian immigrants.  And while it’s obsolete and the Legislature has never to my knowledge used the provision, it was a racist hunk of shit that doesn’t belong in the Constitution (try telling that to the 31 asshole House members that voted against allowing Amendment 1 on the ballot though).  I’m assuming you can guess where this went: the Amendment failed, which means the provision stands.  Now, there wasn’t a lot of noise about this, and the Amendment was worded horribly (there was actually a triple negative in the verbiage) but to me that just says that people here are either too stupid to figure it out, too apathetic to care, or too racist to vote yes.  Any way you look at it, not a ringing endorsement for the populace.

But that pales in comparison to Amendment 2, which changed the State Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman.  I’m so pissed off that 62% of Floridians think this steaming coil of bigoted dog shit is the business of the government, much less something that belongs in the fucking Constitution, I’m not even going to make jokes about getting some extra wives.  This received big support from lots of churches (and assholes), which is just one more reason my bile backs up around organized religion (and assholes).

Note their URL: Yes2Marriage.org. What a monumental lie. I'd like to suggest that instead they try: Yes2TellingYouHowToLiveBecauseWe'reBigotedScaredLittleBitches.org

And on that note, lets move onto:

THE BAD:

Hmm.  Really, the only BAD that I can think of is that I didn’t win my election, but I didn’t expect to, so I can’t really list it.  Of course, anyone that reads BITF even occasionally has probably figured out that I’m a Libertarian, and that I have real doubts and worries about Obama’s domestic policy; particularly in the areas of income taxes, health care programs, protectionist trade policies and the possibility of another (please no) New Deal type of jobs program.

Funnily enough though, I met my U.S. Congressman Tim Mahoney yesterday (Mahoney lost his election because he got caught a couple of weeks ago trying to cover up the fact that he cheated on his wife - which, come to think of it, counts as a BAD itself - the fact that he lost an election over it I mean - you can make your own judgement on the fidelity part) and we spoke for a good twenty minutes.  Nice guy, too.  Actually listened to me and responded thoughtfully and directly.  Didn’t make a pass at me OR my lovely wife.  Anyway, Congressman Mahoney (who’s a Blue Dog Democrat) honestly believes (or so he said at any rate, and he is a politician so take that with a grain of salt) that Obama will govern pragmatically and from the center in the areas that most concern me, and I’m hopeful that’s true.  At any rate, you certainly can’t call what MIGHT happen a bad, so let’s just jump on to:

THE GOOD:

There’s a lot good here, and all in all I’m pretty happy with the yesterday’s outcomes.  I’ll go with the bulleted list to better handle my verbosity:

• For the next four years, we’ll all be spared hearing conspiracy theorists explain how the election was stolen.
• The silly geese on Facebook can finally take Hussein out of their names.
• We have absolutely no possibility of Sarah Palin being President before 2013 (and even then, unless the country is racked with nostalgia and really misses having a retard in the Oval Office, I think we’re safe from that disaster).
• There are going to be a whole bunch of serious racists going fucking bat-shit, and not a damn thing they can do about it but shoot more meth.
• Three words: International Street Cred (Biden might have called that four words).
• Tons of jokes about Biden’s plugs, botox and facelift (see preview here).  Note: I do understand that this can turn into a BAD fairly rapidly - but for now, its a GOOD.
• The Dems did NOT (at least as of the time I wrote this they hadn’t) achieve a super-majority in the Senate.  Even my dyed-in-the-wool-Democrat mother who, at 82 years of age worked her ass off for Obama, agrees with me that 60 Democrat Senators would be bad.
• And then there’s this (cue patriotic music):

Without sounding all soft and sappy, I am truly proud that this country was able to elect a black man to the Presidency.  I mentioned this to someone lately and they challenged me on it, assuming I meant that I wanted Obama to win because he is black.  Nope.  I just wanted to know that the country I live in has evolved enough that it could happen.  Maybe because I’m a cynic, maybe because I seem to keep meeting closet (and sometimes open) bigots down here, but I didn’t think it could.  Not for a long time anyway.  And today I find myself really, really happy that it did.

So Obama winning: a definite GOOD.

You know, my daughter Nina will be old enough to vote in 7 years.  My son, Desmond, in 10.  And, largely because of this election, by that time the race or gender of our Presidential candidates may actually no longer be an issue.  And if we (and they) are really lucky, neither will their religion, or lack thereof. And that is the goodest thing of all.

Now go to sleep little Cindy Lou Who.

I swore I wasn’t going to do a political post today because really, how fucking typical would that be?  But I did go vote for myself (proof below), so I figure it deserves at least a short note.

My 2008 Florida ballot. You can click on it for a larger, legible version.

If you were to click on that ballot to get a better look, you’d notice a few of things:

1. They’ve changed how we vote down here again.  This time it’s completely idiot proof.  No chads, no computer screens, and a paper trail.  They even make you do a demo in front of the election official to prove you are able to connect two blocks together with a magic marker.  In hindsight I wish I’d pretended to just not understand: stand there and keep repeating “wait, what am I supposed to do?” and maybe connect my name with the page number. But I always think of that stuff too late and my balls are just too small anyway, so I played it like a good citizen and showed them I knew how to vote.  When you’re done connecting the little lines, you feed the entire ballot into a machine that shreds it and changes the vote to whomever the the Freemasons have decreed wins this year.
2. I don’t vote in elections that I don’t know anything about.  If everyone is like me, I’m going to lose pretty big.  Thankfully most people aren’t, so I have a minuscule chance at this thing (we found out today that a friend’s mom who had no idea of who I was had already voted for me because my name was first on the list.  Woo Hoo!)
3. I live in a swing state. I voted for Barr.  Live with it.

Tonight I’ll get to watch my name scroll by on TV.  There will be a number next to it.  I hope there are more than 2 digits in that number.

Letcha know tomorrow.

I picked my son up at aftercare this afternoon, and had the following conversation with the woman at the pickup area:

Woman: “Was that you I saw in the paper?”
Me: “Was I in handcuffs? Or was I running for office?”
Woman: “Running for office”
Me: “Yes”

So for the first time, I’ve been recognized in public.  Now, I was the guy in the opening credit sequence and all the bumpers (those goofy little 5 second bits they sometimes play right before a commercial) for the show 8-Track Flashback for years - so I was on VH1 like 13,000,000 times.  No one, not ONE person ever came up to me and asked if I was that sexy man posing as Steve Austin on the TV.

But appear once or twice in the Palm Beach Post and I’m mobbed (o.k., accosted… queried… by one person. Still though…..).

Of course no one is wearing my face on a t-shirt like that horrible David Schwimmer did with Barack Obama’s face on Regis today (just channel flippin’ channels over coffee - don’t get any dopey ideas about my tv habits - I’m more than willing to admit what crappy shows I watch).  Really though, isn’t this whole cult of personality around Obama getting a little creepy?

I KNOW this isn't that dope from Friends: it's some other celebrity sporting an Obama shirt because I couldn't find a screen shot of Schwimmer on Regis. But isn't this shirt kinda ugly? It reminds me of some creepy looking propaganda poster from from the Soviet Union in the 50's. And no, I'm not implying anything - I just saying the shirt is crappy.

The only other time that people asked me about having been in the paper was when I about 17 and arrested for hanging out of the passenger window of my dad’s ‘78 Grand Prix and flipping off another driver that had cut us off (my best friend, who had fucking diplomatic immunity was driving.  Immunity which he immediately and unnecessarily flashed, pissing off the East Hampton cops and in all likelihood resulting in me being cuffed behind my back during the ride to the hoosegow).  I also yelled something along the lines of “ASSHOLE!”  (to the driver, not the cops).  According to the charges, however, I had used the word bitch, and when the judge read that in court I felt it necessary to correct him: “actually your honor, I caller her an asshole.”  He turned red and yelled at me that he’d rather be called a bitch than an asshole. Me, I’m not so sure).

At any rate, that little story rated a monolithic 10 or so column inches in the East Hampton Star - fully embellished to portray me as someone who had verbally abused and threatened an old lady trying to carry her groceries across the street in a cross walk (the editor of the Star at the time despised me, possibly because I had knocked her to the ground when I was about 12 and she had broken her ankle.  It was self defense though: She was wearing a fur hat with ear flaps and angrily charging me because her youngest son had made up a lie about something I had done to him).

So people asked me about that one, too. I guess I just look better in print than I do in polyester.

Anyone else notice the number of people who have the middle name Hussein?  Holy crap!  Why, I only have like 30 friends on Facebook, and a couple of them have the middle name Hussein.   I wonder if they know that they share a middle name with the guy running for president….. My friends (as McCain would say), that is an incredible coincidence.

What makes me think it’s coincidence?  Well, what else could it be?  I mean, I can’t think of any legitimate reason for an adult to pretend that their middle name is Hussein.  Unless…..nah.  No way do I know that many people who would jump on a stupid meaningless trend that really amounts to a public circle-jerk and mutual admiration society.

Do I?

Last night I finally got to watching X’s performance at last year’s SXSW (I dvr’d it off of HDNet).  It was…odd. First up? Why, silly censorship of course.  During the song “Los Angeles” (which is one of my favorite songs, ever), the sound guy appeared to be ducking the vocals on “offensive” words.  So the lyrics went something like this:

“She started to hate every mumble and mumble, every Mexican that gave her a lot of mumble”

So unless you’re into South-of-the-border mumble, that was a big box of suck.  Oddly they didn’t duck the word “fuck” for the rest of the night.  Maybe it was coincidence, maybe context, or maybe someone at HDNet just doesn’t like Exene singing about a woman that hates niggers, and Jews, and Mexicans that give her a lot of shit. Plain Mexicans were apparently A-O.K.

But you know what was really hard?  Exene looked like an overweight hausfrau with crazy-lady lipstick.  Think Kirstie Alley in a smock, singing punk rock.  Yeah, I know.

Ah, shit. Get the shredder: I have a file-folder of fantasy images I need to dump from my brain.

Thing is, she sounded really good. I mean she had some pitch and cracking issues but what the fuck do you expect?  The only important stuff as far as I’m concerned is timing and hitting her harmonies with John Doe;  that, they had down.

“And what of Billy Zoom?” you might ask.  Well, I’d be glad to tell you about Billy Zoom: I think someone spiked his juice box with a fistful of Xanax.  Or mushrooms.  Or both.  He had an insane grin that barely changed the entire set, and he kept doing these weird smile-and-nods to people off camera.  He looked like Jerry Lee Lewis on acid. You know, if Jerry Lee Lewis played guitar like a total badass.

Is having one of the coolest guitars, ever, enough to explain that grin? Maybe.

Now, I wasn’t lucky enough to see X back when I was buying their albums so I don’t know if that’s just Billy Zoom’s stage thing – it probably is – but that didn’t make it any less weird. But grin or not, that mother-fucker can play guitar (and a sweet guitar it is) and they pretty much rocked.

I just had to avert my gaze from time to time.

X @ SXSW gets 3.5 out of 5 bones.

I’ve talked about this before: the battle between wanting to write good, amusing (well, to me anyway) posts and wanting to get one written every day to keep people hanging about (yes, I’m aware that I should be “writing for own pleasure” and I do.  Pleasure myself (hehe).  But nothing qute tops the feeling of someone else getting pleasure from my writing, which is what I’m talking about here). Obviously if I could accomplish both quality and quantity I’d be a happy camper, but it just doesn’t seem to be working out that way.  Hell, sometimes I’m not sure I’m accomplishing either.

Thing is, I’ve been pretty ok with some of the stuff I’ve written lately, which just makes the whole thing worse: “Douche!  That post sucked compared to that other one!”  I hate it when that happens, particularly when I punctuate the shouting with a self-inflicted tittie-twister (Indian burns being impossible to apply to one’s own arm).

The big problem is that I seem to be turning into more of a weekly column kind of a guy, but that shit won’t fly if I’m the only one writing here.  Not if I actually want people to bother reading this stuff.  So consider this a whiney placeholder, because the only thing worse than posts I’m not personally in love with are posts that don’t fucking exist at all.

If you’re so inclined, you could also help me out by either signing up for email notifications (thus easing my neurotic obsession over possibly losing the few readers that stop in) and/or hire me to write a weekly column for your national magazine.

Now that’d be real cool, daddy-o.

Thomas L. Friedman just sucks.  We’ll start there.  Oh, and here too: since I have in the past written reviews of things I haven’t seen or read (like my virtual review of the Sex And The City movie) I ought to tell you up front that I have NOT read Hot, Flat and Crowded and have absolutely no intention of doing so.  I’m also quite sure that it’s entirely unnecessary.  I’ll get to why in a moment.

But first, back to what I was saying before, which is that Thomas L. Friedman sucks.  I know this because I did read as much of his last book “The World is Flat” as I could stomach (which was about five pages.)  I also saw him speak a couple of years ago.  Don’t do that.  He’s bad enough in small doses on television, but hearing him regurgitate the bad metaphors and boring anecdotes on which he’s built an fanbase of sycophantic Barnes & Nobel browsers and editorial page writers was enough to cause me to consider the consequences of thrusting my Pilot V5 pen into my left eye.  Thomas L. Friedman is exactly the sort of huckster I hate most: taking what is immediately apparent to anyone that thinks about it for a minute, recasting it in a metaphor that makes an audience feel smart for understanding it, then serving it up with a “gosh, isn’t this brilliant of me” verve to the bottom-feeders that hang starry-eyed on every word.  People that can leave the event (or finish the book) feeling like they’ve gotten smarter and sporting one more conversation starter for the next cocktail party they find themselves feeling inadequate at: “Hey, have you read the new Friedman? He says the world is FLAT!”

One of these things is flat. It's not the world. I've provided additional visual clues if you have trouble with the process of elimination.

That book, which other NY Times columnists bravely called “brilliant,” seems to have built on a statement made to him by the CEO of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, while Thomas L. Friedman was in Bangalore.  During a conversation about doing business globally, Nilekani used the phrase “the playing field is being leveled.”   Thomas L. Friedman relates how he couldn’t get it out of his mind and stewed on it until he decided that what Nilekani was actually saying is that world is flat.  He delivers this experience in the book as if he’s realized that Nilekani has purposely passed on a piece of very secret, very powerful information:

I kept chewing on that phrase: “The playing field is being leveled.”

What Nandan is saying, I thought, is that the playing field is being flattened… Flattened? Flattened? My God, he’s telling me the world is flat!

Eureka!  A premise for a book to be sold to lazy, wanna-be intellectuals.  I think I could hear the pop of his boner from here.  The next time Friedman wants a concept for a book, I suggest he save the airfare to India and just sit in on a marketing meeting in a SOHO loft: there’s no shortage of silly idiomatic expressions and metaphors being bandied about at one of those.  But wait!  My advice isn’t necessary (stupid Brad.)  Thomas L. Friedman doesn’t need new metaphors.  He’s actually able to recycle his shitty ones, which he’s done with his new book “The World is Hot, Flat, and Crowded.”  I hope I’m not ruining it for you if I tell you that in this one we learn (ohmigod!) that that the world isn’t just flat, it’s hot and crowded too!

His work here is done, for now. But fear not, citizen! Whenever and wherever there's a need for bad metaphors and books about things you should be able to figure out yourself, Captain Obvious will be there.

Let’s hear it in his words though:

The world also has a problem: It is getting hot, flat, and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable….

I am convinced that the best way for America to solve its big problem - the best way for America to get its “groove” back - is for us to take the lead in solving the world’s big problem.

Heady shit, right?  And it goes on for 448 pages.  O.K., so the world’s hot (global warming) and crowded (global fucking.)  And?  And then Friedman drops this bomb: the next big global industry is ET.  Not E.T., with the finger, and the bike, and Elliot, and the Reeses Pieces product placement.  Thomas L. Friedman’s ET is Energy Technology.  As in wind, solar, etc.  That’s it.  That’s the book.  The world is hot, flat, crowded and there’s a big opportunity in energy technology (I refuse to support his attempt to get another meme attributed to him, especially one as stupid as “ET”).  The rest you can probably figure out on your own.  Only Thomas L. Friedman can take an idea that could almost fill a four page pamphlet and expand it into a 448 page book.  Do I even need to explain why it’s entirely unnecessary to read the fucking thing now?

Anyway, he’s shilling it all over the television so reading it is doubly unnecessary.  I’ve seen him on Maher (who is skilled: he conducted the entire interview with his lips on Friedman’s ass,) I’ve seen him on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and if I see him again I’ll take it as a sign of the apocalypse.

If you’re still with me, you might be asking yourself: “Why are you being such a pissy bitch about it, Brad?” So let me say this about that:  The crap in Thomas L. Friedman’s book, the tripe he spouts on television (did you know that you can fit “ET” into an answer to any question?  I didn’t.) is exactly the sort of pseudo-intellectual poo that passes for intelligent conversation these days and that makes me fucking nuts.  You wonder why people have stopped thinking for themselves?  Maybe because verbose gasbags like Thomas L. Friedman will do all their thinking for them, no matter what the subject.  Thomas L. Friedman’s books remind me of shitty self-help books: all the obvious answers for why mommy didn’t like you without having to figure them out for yourself.

By the way, maybe mommy didn’t like you because you did shit like read bad self-help books.

Yeah, I didn’t mean it that way.  I just meant that Bone In The Fan got a very nice mention over at writer Nancy Rommelman’s blog, which I appreciate muchly.  Not only does she have good taste in blogs, she’s got writing chops, so go spend some time checking out some of her articles and posts.

There will be 14 candidates for President on the ballot in Florida. In addition to Obama and McCain, we can choose from the following:

• Gene Amondson: Prohibition Party.  Now I, for one, had no idea that this party even existed.  Didn’t we learn our lesson a few decades ago about this?  Their candidate is a landscape painter.
• Chuck Baldwin: Constitution Party.  I don’t know much about him except that he used to be pretty wired into the Republican party.  And I’m too lazy to look into it.
• Bob Barr: Libertarian Party.  A turncoat, a fraud, or someone who has seen the light, depending on how you look at it.  I’m a Libertarian, but Barr was a monumental social conservative for a long time.  His running mate is a douche.
• James Harris: Socialist Workers Party. Oh please.
• Charles Jay: Boston Tea Party.  Another libertarian party, and a play on words too!  Also a pain in the ass to find on the web, due to their name.  Fully 500 members. Their site is here, if you’re interested.
• Alan Keyes: American Independent Party. Line one of their website: “We Acknowledge the Creator’s Gracious Gifts.” And so on….
• Gloria La Riva: Party of Socialism and Liberation. Because if there’s one thing history has told us, it’s that socialism leads to liberation.  Morons. Their site is now enhanced with 30% more Che!
• Cynthia McKinney: Green Party.  Yawn.  I’ve done my green rants.  Boring.
• Brian Moore: Socialist Party.  As opposed to the Socialist Workers Party and the Party of Socialism and Liberation.
• Ralph Nader: Ecology Party.  You already know how I feel about this stupidhead.
• Thomas Robert Stevens: Objectivist Party.  These guys built their entire party around the writings of Ayn Rand.  What next, the Lion Witch and Wardrobe Pary?
• Gary Nettles (qualified as write-in).  Who cares?

My point being, well, nothing really.  Except that apaprently anyone can get on the ballot here, which actually isn’t such a bad thing (I wonder if they’ll let me nominate my colon.)  As for me, I’m still in the undecided column (I believe it’s too late to get my colon on the ballot) though leaning (again)  towards voting Libertarian.

Look, I want to like Obama, I really do.   He’s a likeable guy.  I think he genuinely cares about doing the right thing.  He’s smart.  I like his ideas about pork (the money kind, not the pig kind - I don’t know how he feels about bacon.) And he might just shake things up in a good way.  And maybe, just maybe the Dems won’t completely fuck everything up in four years.

I don't care how you feel about the guy, this photo looks like a Sears photo gallery shot from 1972. Or like someting you'd find in my high scool year book, taken when we all went to the "No Nukes" concert at Battery Park in 1981. Awful. Even so, he's just so damn LIKEABLE. Plus, his daughter Sasha (in his lap) is WAY cute.

But then I think about his windfall profit tax idea, and his “save jobs from being shipped overseas” rhetoric, and his pro-Mexico/US-wall position, his failure to stand up and say something truthful about the economy right now while encouraging the $700 billion package, and Joe Biden’s creepy metamorphosis into Carrottop, and I think “well, maybe they can.”  Fuck things up I mean.

Not that there aren’t plenty of good things about him too.  But you can figure those things out for yourself.  Try starting with his website.

And while I’m not a huge fan of Barr’s and I actively dislike Root (that’d be Wayne Allyn Root, Barr’s running mate who, as Doug Stanhope points out, spells his middle name like he’s in an 80’s hair band), they aren’t going to win.  So I’m back to thinking that a vote for the Libertarian party is the only way to be heard at all when I say that the government has it’s head up its own ass.  Really far, too.  Like, inhumanly far.

In the end it’s a moot point.  Neither candidate will listen to libertarian ideas, Obama will probably win, and that’ll be that.  But I will say that I’m open to being completely wrong about his policies.  I really hope that he’s everything that the Starbucks baristas, trustafarians and leftist women everywhere believe he will be, by which I mean I hope he makes useful, meaningful changes in Washington, gets our servicemen out of Iraq, starts to restore our International Street Cred (ISC) and gets people interested in the political process again.

If we can just keep him away from gun legislation, protectionist trade policies, windfall profit taxes and the complete socialization of banks and corporations this might not be so bad.  I’m not holding my breath though.

I watched the debate tonight.  I know there are a couple of you that won’t agree with me, but here’s the deal: Obama won, and won pretty damn big.  And I actually wanted McCain to win.  Not because I’m a fan of his, but because I hate agreeing with large crowds of baristas.  I guess I’ll have to console myself by taking the incredibly arrogant position that I, in fact, have good reasons for thinking Obama won.  On the other hand, he could have pooped the stage called McCain “Captain Dusty Farts” and the trustafarians would have still picked him as the winner.

Big reasons for me?

1. Let me tell you my friends, having the government buy your house to at an overvalued price so it can resell it to you at its current market value is the most retarded fucking idea I’ve ever heard of.  I shouldn’t have to explain why, my friends.  And it would be stupid even if the government wasn’t broke.
2. Also my friends, if I had to hear McCain explain one more time how Americans are the smartest, best workers anywhere, so of course we’ll win, I was going to suck back a jar of mayonnaise.
3. Two words my friends: “that one.” Creepy.  Reminded me of a pissed off dad.
4. Too many attacks on Obama rather than simply answering the questions, my friends.  McCain just sounded whiny. And by the way my friends, does anyone actually believe that what Obama said was that he was going to attack Pakistan (and by the way, did that seem ironic to you?  That McCain was bringing up talking first, and Obama was talking about crossing the border to cap Bin Laden?)
5. Obama actually appeared to listen to McCain my friends, while McCain looked like he was just waiting to criticize him.  It looked disrepectful my friends.
6. Well my friends, McCain seemed really fucking old.  Old age, old ideas, old stories, old sense of humor.  Sorry.
7. Obama didn’t screw anything up.  And he seemed smarter.  Way smarter, my friends.
8. Me. My friends, I’m an avowed disliker (is that a word?) of both parties and all four candidates but my gut tells me Obama would be a much better President.  Of course then I calm the fuck down, stop acting like a horny schoolgirl and start considering some of his actual positions, and my bowels clench up and I start compulsively farting and twitching.

A few more thoughts: Obama’s health care plan is completely flakey, his class warfare shit makes me want to power-puke, the simplistic regulation/de-regulation argument is a pandering pile of dog discharge that means absolutely nothing, neither of them said jack shit about a realistic way to deal with the economy  - which isn’t surprising since they were both in favor of the horrible $700 billion bailout package - and we heard nothing really new from either of them.  I will say that McCain’s close was pretty good.  But so was Obama’s.

Question: What does “win” mean anyway?  Is the winner the person who looked best, answered best and appeared most Presidential?  Or is the winner the person who did the best job of swinging people over to voting for them?

Answer: It doesn’t matter, because That One won either way.

I was seriously disturbed during the VP debate last week.  And it wasn’t the Palin Wink ™ that pushed me over the edge.  It was the fact that much like Al Gore before him, Joe Biden has begun to look like Carrottop.  Now if you know me, you probably know I’m no fan of Biden’s (we can start with his “war on drugs” if you want) but this isn’t about that.  It’s about what appears to be a very strange and very scary cult led by a second rate Vegas prop comic.  You think Jim Jones harshed his followers?  At least they went out looking vaguely human (albeit a bit bloaty.)  I shudder to think what these guys are going to look like in a few years.  Take a look:

Photos of the hive leader, Al Gore, and Joe Biden.

It’s clear to me now that a few months ago when I posted about Carrottop and Gore looking alike, I wasn’t seeing the big picture.  I’ve stumbled upon something here, something big.  The mainstream press hasn’t written word one about this either - because it goes deep, baby.  All this bullshit people are slinging about Obama being a muslim terrorist is absurd.

The real danger is coming from Vegas, it’s got red hair, and it’s carrying a case full of remarkably un-funny props.

You may have seen some of my prior posts about the church down the street from me and the wacky slogans they put up in front of the joint to try and build up their membership.  If you haven’t, you can check out the whole lot of them by clicking here to see a list of all the ones I’ve weighed in on.

At any rate, this week’s pitch goes a little something like this:

It is unlikely that there’ll be a decrease in the wages of sin.

This is awesome news.  First of all,  I could definitely use some extra money right now and I didn’t even know the church was hiring (it’s even within walking distance.)  Better still though is what they’re paying for.  I mean, I knew that you could probably get work for doing really nasty shit like stealing things or killing people, but I’m a lover not a fighter, so that’s just not my bag.  But the news that there are plenty more sins to choose from if you’re looking for work is, yeah I’ll say it, revelatory!   For example, did you know you can earn big money for:

• Craftiness (2 Cor 4:2)
• Following the desires of the mind (Eph 2:3)
• Being Carnal or worldly (1 Cor 3:1-3; Ro 8:6-8)
• Eating and drinking with the drunken (Mt 24:49)
• Fornication (Acts 15:20; Mk 7:21; Ro 1:29)

And I’m pretty sure I can do all five of those at once, so I’m figuring my mortgage will be covered at least. But if those aren’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of others on the list of 667 sins posted here, (you knew they wouldn’t stop at 666, right? And they claim the list isn’t even complete!)  So there’s way more to choose from.  Like, did you know that “foolishness” is a sin?  Well, it is (Mk 7:22, Titus 3:3).  So is “debate” (Ro 1:29,) “pride” (Ja 4:6; Ro 1:30; Pv 16:18; Ps 10:4,) and “not honoring the president” (1 Pe 2:17,) (so the Presidential debates tonight should go down in flames.  Literally.)

Got kids?  Tell them they can’t play Xbox and get paid big bucks for “provoking your children to wrath” (Eph 6:4.)  Do you like going out on the town?  How’d you like to get paid for “dressing indecently” (1 Tim 2:9; Pv 7:10) which could probably earn your boyfriend a few bucks for “refusing to leave the great harlot” (Rev 18:4; 2 Cor 6:16,17,) and if you’re lucky you’ll both be earning crazy ducats for “sex outside of marriage” (1 Cor 5:11; 6:18,20; Ex 22:16,17.)

There’s just so much good stuff to choose from I don’t know where to start.  But riotous living (Lk 15:13,18) sounds fun, so maybe I’ll go with that until I get an assignment from god.

It’s me you silly geese.  Many of you know that I work with Joanna at her awesome body product company Product Body, but I’m looking to bring home more bacon. 

Many of you also know what I’ve done, or what I’m good at (and what I’m not,) so I won’t post a frigging resume.  Suffice it to say that I’ve been successful bootstrapping and running businesses, and project management, copywriting, brand and/or internet consulting, and anything where I get to run stuff and boss people around is in my wheelhouse.  And by the way, Product Body is not being abandoned, so those of you that are big fans need not panic.

I just think it’s time for a change for me - plus we need more income around here.  I do have one other project I’m working on (pitching a new television show,) but I have no idea if that is going to work out - so I’m looking around for something new for act III.  Relocation is absolutely on the table (if anyone has a cool job in Tokyo, sign me up right now - domo arigato is the extent of my Japanese however.)  I’m open to pretty much anything but selling my sweet Irish/German ass, but would really love to sink my teeth into some regular writing.

So if you need someone, or knows someone who needs someone, or knows someone who’s cousin knows this guy that heard about this chick that has a friend who’s company needs someone….let me know.

You can find out a modicum more about me at one of my otro website Brad C Schmidt - there’s a link there back here (so you can go in circles all day,) as well as links to my business and Product Body.