Who's your daddy? That's what John Kerry whispered into Shrub's ear after the debate tonight. Kerry came off as calm, cool, and collected, whereas Shrub came off like a big baby. Kerry also reminded Shrub about his real daddy, Poppy Bush, and how he said that invading Baghdad would be a mistake with no clear exit strategy. And we all know that Shrub has issues with Poppy. Nice.

Shrub's defense seemed to be "My opponent is a flip-flopper. He sends mixed messages." Kerry was primed for that though and responded, "You know, when I talked about the $87 billion, I made a mistake in how I talk about the war. But the president made a mistake in invading Iraq. Which is worse?" Exactly.

October? Already? September seems such a distant memory.

Tonight's debate already happened according to this AP article. (via Atrios)

CORAL GABLES, Fla. Sept. 30, 2004 — After a deluge of campaign speeches and hostile television ads, President Bush and challenger John Kerry got their chance to face each other directly Thursday night before an audience of tens of millions of voters in a high-stakes debate about terrorism, the Iraq war and the bloody aftermath.

Read the whole thing for yourself. Unbelievable. Just last night The Daily Show did a bit where Ed Helms was telling Jon Stewart what happened at the debate. JS was like, "How do you know what happened, Ed, the debate hasn't even happened yet?" And EH said, "You see Jon, we have a narrative, and we're going to stick to it. So no matter what happens during the debate, we will shape it to fit that narrative."
So utterly ridiculous. My advice? After you watch the debate on C-Span, turn off the television until 11:00 at which time you should tune in to The Daily Show's live post-debate analysis.
I'm cautiously optimistic about how this thing is going to go down. Despite all its scripting and the 32-page "memorandum of understanding," it could still be interesting.

FreeiPod link. If you're feeling adventurous, here is the referral link to the free iPod website. If you join using that link, then you'll show up as one of my five referrals.

Right now, the best offer is the Infone offer---no monthly fees, no sign-up fee, you only pay if you use it, and your freeipod account will be instantly credited as having completed your one required offer (some other offers won't credit you until after a trial period). As with all the offers, you have to give your credit card, but you can cancel Infone at any time. And when you sign up, Infone will send you a $10 gift certificate for Amazon.com within a couple of weeks. I signed up for this one, and I verified that I did indeed sign up with Infone.

One other sidenote, all the freeipod correspondence is going to my Gmail spam folder, so check there for emails if they aren't in your inbox. Important to do this because you have to verify your email with them.

Free iPods? It sounds like a pyramid scheme. Join up at a website, sign up for an online offer with one of their affiliates, get five friends to join and sign up for an offer, and then just wait for your brand new iPod to arrive. Sound too good to be true? Maybe it is. But there is a good amount of evidence to suggest that maybe it isn't.

The major complaints so far have been related to spam, but I read somewhere (don't remember where) that the company has stopped its email marketing. Also, some people have complained about extended waits, but the company behind the deal says the waits are because of a backlog at Apple. As for the offers that you have to sign up for, you only have to sign up for one, and there are free offers and others where you just pay $5 for shipping and have to then cancel membership. For example, one offer only requires that you sign up with Infone, but there are no other commitments or monthly fees involved.

In the spirit of scientific advancement (?), I say that we give this a shot. By "we," I mean me and five other of you suckers. If you're concerned about spam, I have some more Gmail accounts to hand out. Interested parties, email me at yourlogohere@gmail.com (or my usual email address for those in the know), or just post a comment with your email address, and I will send you a referral link. Then we'll just wait and see what happens from there. And when a new iPod shows up in the mail, I will post the glorious pictures and help anyone else to get their own. And should this go horribly wrong, we will never speak of it again.

It can't be any worse than driving all over Tucson with a coupon booklet, just trying to get a discount on some fish tacos or Long John Silvers.

American Idiots. If the intense focus on undecided swing voters hasn't made you uncomfortable enough about the state of our so-called-democracy, then this will.

Just what D.C. needs (not). A friggin baseball team. Major League Baseball is expected to announce tomorrow that the Montreal Expos will be coming to town. I'm not down on this idea just because I'm an Orioles fan--I don't care about the O's that much. I'm down on the idea because the economic costs are always underestimated and the benefits are always overestimated. The stadiums draw money away from other sources of entertainment rather than simply infusing more money into the local economy. The jobs that are created are generally low-paying and seasonal. And the tax revenues generated are often outpaced by the annual cost to the city.

Specifically for D.C., bringing baseball to town is bad on a number of counts. The traffic around here is horrendous enough already. The metro system is also pretty crappy. The proposed site, Anacostia, isn't exactly the best part of town. Maybe this will cause some urban renewal. I dunno. But all that urban renewal means is just pushing out the poor and moving in the middle and upper class.

The worst part of the deal is that the new stadium will be built with $440 million in taxpayer dollars. I can think of so many better way to spend that kind of money starting with the D.C. public schools. So many of the schools are in need of serious renovations, new equipment, and new teachers. Schools frequently close because the kids don't have air conditioning in the classrooms, but you can bet the luxury boxes will. Also, there aren't enough homeless shelters to meet the demand and the Metro police could use some sensitivity training. And would it kill the city to fill in a couple of potholes?

Anyway, doesn't D.C. have enough losing teams already?

Science minute. "Virgin to Launch Commercial Space Flights." Seems a bit extreme just to try and get laid. Ba-da-bum. Thankyou, I'll be here all week. Be sure to tip your waiter.

Stoned Slackers. Follow-up on Jon Stewart's appearance on the O'Really Factor. Turns out TDS viewers are more well-informed than O'Lielly's. But you already knew that. Ol' Splotchy will be a guest on TDS October 7th. That should be a good time.

Speaking of O'Really, he got Shrub to say that if given the chance, he'd do the "Mission Accomplished" flyboy stunt again. You just have to wonder if given the chance, Chris Matthews and all the rest of the bobbleheads would slobber and drool over how studly Shrub looked and what a great moment in history it was. Morons.

Arizona bloggers beware. You might be reported to the FBI for un-American activity:

A series of ads have been running in student newspapers across the country charging that universities are dominated by liberal or left-wing professors. The ads are paid for by well-funded groups like Students for Academic Freedom and the Independent Women's Forum. Some of the ads encourage students to report any so-called anti-American faculty or statements made by professors. And that is apparently what happened to David Gibbs, an Associate professor of History and Sociology at the University of Arizona. After his Spring course "What is Politics?", a student wrote the following on an anonymous evaluation form:

"I believe that the university should check into David Gibbs. He is an anti-American communist who hates America and is trying to brainwash young people into thinking America sucks. He needs to go and live in a Third World country to appreciate what he has here. Have him investigated by the FBI. FBI has been contacted."

I'd like to think that if I had stayed on at the Arizona that I, too, would have been accused of trying to brainwash the kids. Maybe at my new institution I'll gain this distinction.

Bush Family Bio according to The Onion. And then there's this little bit about how Prescott Bush did business with the Nazis. This one has been floating around the internet for years, but apparently now there are a few books coming out on the subject based on some new documents, and there is also a court case against the Bush family.

I really don't understand what makes a student think that it would be alright to read a newspaper during class. During a large lecture where you're unlikely to be seen, okay, fine. But in a twenty student discussion section? I don't get it. We were talking about presentation of self and impression management when I notice this kid reading the school paper--not even trying to be inconspicuous about it, he's just holding it right up in front of him. I say, "And so a lot of effort goes into giving others a certain impression of your self, and someone who is sitting in class reading a newspaper probably isn't doing a very good job of maintaining their sense of self because it shows they aren't paying attention to what's going on in the class." And the kid was absolutely clueless. He said, "Oh, I wasn't reading it." So I asked why he was holding it up if he wasn't reading it, and why he thought that would be appropriate behavior. He apologized, but I assured him that I wouldn't be losing any sleep over it, and said that I doubted he would either.

Gremlins. "What's up with all the midnight blogging?? Does your coursework have a Gremlin component?" Good question. I should really start getting to bed earlier. But, I'm an idiot. So I stay up late watching television and surfing the internet, and then I get up early the next morning only to fall asleep on the couch with Mr.Tibbs, and then I'm not tired at the time when I should be going to sleep. It's dumb, I know. But for the most of my adult life I have been a night person and definitely not a morning person.

And can anyone remember what the names of the two main Gremlins were--both the cute one and the green one? (without Googling for it...I could do that myself)

Mess-o-potamia. Iraq in a nutshell.

And this is good? Shrub as his press conference today, "I saw a poll that said the right track/wrong track in Iraq was better than here in America. It was pretty darn strong. I mean, the people see a better future." Soooo.....people in Iraq are more optimistic than people here? And this is supposed to make me feel better because? (the Iraqi poll he was talking about is two months old, and the situation has gotten a wee bit worse since then, so it is possible that Americans are less pessimistic now than the Iraqis)

And here's what Rummy sez about democracy and elections, "Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great. Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."

Now, that's the Rummy that we know and love to hate. What a fucking asshole. "Nothing's perfect in life." Keep that in mind from now until November 2nd.

We be jammin. Now here is an idea that I can get behind. Some churches in Mexico are jamming cell phones because of the growing problem of phones ringing during mass. The $1500 devices supposedly operate only inside the building and don't damage the phones.
Is there any way that these could be installed in classrooms? In the Intro class that I'm a T.A. for, I have heard a phone ring in almost every class so far. Even the professor's phone rang one day. It's ridiculous.

And if true, this is unfuckingbelievable. Bushco is now negotiating with terrorists. Or maybe they aren't. Bushco says that a release of two female Iraqi prisoners is not "imminent." Of course, "imminent" is a touchy word with this crowd seeing as how Scott McMuffin said that nobody in Bushco ever said that Iraq was an "imminent threat."

UPDATE: Iraqi judges have now ordered the release of three Iraqi prisoners being held in U.S. custody. But wait...if they're being held in U.S. custody, then how can....

The CBS memo flap is being used by conservatives to push the "liberal media" meme. Here are some media shenanigans from the Clinton years.

Peace train, holy roller. Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, can't fly 'round here. Apparently, he got himself on some no-fly lists. I'm just waiting for that to happen to me or certain members of my immediate family. You think I don't know you're watching, Ashcroft?
Cat Stevens did much of the soundtrack for "Harold and Maude." Netflix it if you've never seen it.

Monkey Twofer! Monkey playing the piano. Monkey washing a cat.

Jon Stewart enter the "No Spin Zone." Full transcript here at Wonkette. Apparently, the audience for TDS is nothing but "stoned slackers."

O'REILLY: You actually have an influence on this presidential election. That is scary.
STEWART: If that were so, that would be quite frightening.
O'REILLY: But it is. It's true. I mean, you've got stoned slackers watching your dopey show every night, OK, and they can vote.
STEWART: Yeah.
O'REILLY: You can't stop them.
STEWART: Yeah, I just don't know how motivated they would be, these stoned slackers.
O'REILLY: Yeah, it just depends if they have to go out that day.
STEWART: What am I, a Cheech and Chong movie? Stoned slackers?
O'REILLY: Come on, you do the research, you know the research on your program.
STEWART: No, we don't.
O'REILLY: Eighty-seven percent are intoxicated when they watch it. You didn't see that?
STEWART: No, I didn't realize that.
O'REILLY: Yeah, we have that there.
STEWART: We come on right after, I believe, puppets that make crank calls...

Everyone in the news biz is so jealous of Jon Stewart these days. The fact that they don't understand the rise in popularity of TDS just shows how much they don't get it. (apparently, O'Lielly was joking about the 87 percent figure)
Richard Clarke was on TDS tonight. His book is in paperback now, and I think he added some recipes to the index. Mark Racicot, Shrub campaign chair, is on tomorrow night (wasn't he just on the other week before the convention?). Always a good time when J.S. handles the Bushco lackeys.

Mark your calendars. The presidential debates will be on September 30th, October 8th, and October 13th. Johnboy and Uncle Dick will debate on October 5th.

The debate on the 8th will be a townhall style event, with the questions being posed by voters who are leaning toward one candidate or the other. People are weighing in on who this style will favor. Bush has a weakness dealing with unscripted events, and he is absolutely out of practice since he never takes questions anywhere anymore (other than his "Meet the President" events where the toughest question is, "How are you so great?"). But, ask yourself what kind of person doesn't yet know how they'll vote. Probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer. And Shrub knows how to talk to that level. But I don't get why it's scheduled for a Friday night.

Due to my class schedule, I'll probably miss most of the first and last debates (or I'll catch them on the radio on the drive home). But I wouldn't miss the Cheney/Edwards showdown for anything.

Amazingly enough, none of the moderators are from Faux News. But RNC stooge Charlie "Why won't my head stop shaking" Gibson is bad enough for the townhall debate.

Only six more weeks.

Is Tucker Carlson white? From this past Friday's show, "Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered":

Carlson: Barak Obama, you've written about. Is the -- as I understand the son of a white mother and a Kenyan father. Something about it strikes me as creepy that it's against most Americans that he's black. Is he black?

Hmm..."creepy" that most Americans think that Barack Obama is black. (Tucker paused after saying "against" and then started again, so he was saying that people consider Obama to be black). Now, where would the American people get an idea like that?:

Obama: Maybe [the Illinois GOP] thought that the fact that I'm African-American warranted an African American candidate.

Creepy indeed. I really don't get why PBS gave that pinhead Tucker Carlson any airtime. Couldn't they just show another episode of "Antiques Roadshow"?

The Wage Terminator. Mega-Millionaire Hollywood Star Governor vetoes a bill to raise the minimum wage in California from $6.75 to $7.75 by July 2006. Compassionate conservativism to the rescue! In his defense, Ahhnold said the bill would have increased costs for employers by $4.4 billion. And just who would that money be going to? Why, those sneaky minimum wage workers, that's who! And what would the workers do with that extra dollar an hour? Why, probably spend it, putting it right back in the economy, generating revenues for businesses, stimulating economic growth! Sneaky little hobbitses!

Anyway, everybody knows that $14,400 ($6.75*40*52) a year is more than enough to live somewhere like L.A., San Fran, or Santa Clara. And who better understands the needs of the working poor than the multi-millionaire Governator?

Once again, way to go, California!

Oh, that's rich. You have to check this out.

If you're looking for more, I got nothing right now. Ooh! Wait! ....nope, nothing.

"Cocaine is a hell of a drug." Rick James, you crazy diamond.

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Flamboyant funk musician Rick James had nine drugs in his system when he died suddenly in August, including cocaine, methamphetamine, valium and vicodin, according to a coroner's report Thursday.

Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

GMail invites. I've got five of them. Anyone who wants one, email me at yourlogohere@gmail.com and I'll send you an invite.

Kiwis to Coalition: See ya. One less member in Shrub's imaginary "coalition of the willing." Things are only getting worse over there.

Just like every other year for the past fifteen years, members of Congress have voted to give themselves a pay raise. This time, it's a raise of about $4000. Cost of living has gone up, you know? So it only makes sense that the federal minimum wage has stayed the same at $5.15 since 1997 (eleven states and D.C. have voted to raise the state minimum wage above this level). Because surely the cost of living hasn't gone up at all for those living in poverty. They were poor already, right? Cost of living is cheap if you're poor since you've got nothing to spend. Those lucky duckies with their food stamps don't know how good they've got it. Do you know how much I owed in taxes last year? Far more than someone earning minimum wage, I can tell you that!

I had a kid in class one time say, "Yeah, but nobody actually earns minimum wage." Silly rabbit. He needed a handy dandy myth busting with regard to the minimum wage.

In the morning, VH1 and MTV actually play some videos. So once I've had my fill of the crazies calling in to C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," and after I've gotten my daily dose of athletes behaving badly on Sportscenter, I switch over to the Viacom subsidiaries so that I can stay up on just how horrible the pop music scene is these days. Here's what I learned today:
1. Avril Lavigne is still mopey about something though I'm not sure exactly what (being Canadian perhaps).
2. "Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana" can now replace "chickeny China the Chinese chicken" as the worst song lyric in the last decade. If you don't know what I'm talking about, pray like MC Hammer that you don't ever find out. (I'm not going to give you a link on this one...you know how to Google if you're so inclined)
3. The singer from the crappy post-grunge whiny-rock band Seether resembles a dirty, swollen Jimmy Fallon. And it looks like he's been working on his rock star tortured-soul look for the last 15 years, and the closest he's come is a look of constipation.
4. The band Alter Bridge is simply Creed with a new singer. And judging from the video, my Creed bird crap thesis appears to be holding true. Joel warned me about this one a while back, but I still wasn't quite ready.
5. I'm still not sure who is the worse singer, Ashley or Jessica Simpson. But I know that Ashley Simpson is hardcore punk. How do I know? She wears a shirt that says, "Punk," silly. And she's got her Alanis Morrisette/Joe Cocker shaky-hand, awkward-motion thing going on. And she died her hair black. So you KNOW she's for real.

Sloganator!!! "They gave me Jello today." (via Des)

The new family monster truck reminds me of an old "This Modern World" cartoon.

Just what we need. A truck that is even bigger and less fuel efficient than the Hummer. It's the Navistar CXT:

The new CXT -- short for commercial extreme truck and built from the same platform as the heavy-truck maker's typical tow truck or cement mixer -- will be sold starting this week by Navistar's International Truck & Engine subsidiary.

At 258 inches, or 21-1/2 feet long, the CXT is about 4-1/2 feet longer than the new Hummer H2 pickup, and about 2 inches longer than the F-350 Crew Cab.

But the way it really towers over what's on the road now is in height. At 108 inches, or 9 feet, the CXT stands only a foot below a basketball rim and more than two feet above the Hummer or the F-350.

"It's not going to fit into the standard garage," said Mark Oberle, a spokesman for Navistar, based in Warrenville, Ill., outside Chicago. "We can see it as a vehicle for business people who want to make a distinct impression. For personal use, it's for people who want to make a statement."

That statement it'll be making? "I'm an asshole." I'll really feel comfortable with some jerk tailgating me with one of these while I'm in my little Toyota Echo. I'm not one to advocate destruction of others' property (usually), but anyone who buys one of these deserves to have their windows and headlights smashed.

Yeeeehaw!!! I'm heading out to Wal-Mart to buy my Tec-9 and AR-15 rifle with bayonet mount and flash suppressor. Those deer don't stand a damn chance now. And you've GOT to have the bayonet mount these days. Fucking Brits. You think I don't know what they pulled in 1812?

It's like Ice Cube says, "Today I didn't even have to use my AK, I got to say it was a good day."

Unfortunately, the AK-47 is still outlawed. So only outlaws will have AKs.

Yahoo! Search of the Day. Thanks to the handy dandy sitemeter, I can see how visitors get to ye ole blog. The modal way in which you all get here is simply by typing in the web address. Other times, visitors get here through links on other people's blogs. And quite a few random people get here via internet searches--whether it is a search for Joel Osteen, a monkey washing a cat, the CIA logo, or Mikesch (the formerly 40 pound cat).

Today, some person out there arrived here via a Yahoo! search for gail devers ass photos. Now, I never used those terms all together. But apparently all those terms are in the May archives.

And while we're on the subject of Gail Devers ass photos...which we're not anymore..."The Benefactor" just started on ABC. It's the show where Mark Cuban gives away a million dollars to some lucky bastard. I must now go change the channel. Other things I'm not watching this Fall? "The Apprentice 2," "Joey," and any show with "Marry" or any derivation of "Marry." I will, however, be taping "Clubhouse" every week and watching it over and over and over again (not really).

D-List Celebrity Sighting. Saw this guy out at happy hour on Friday. He was in a purple version of his suit.

Kaboom! It's not just a classic Atari game. It's also a 2-mile wide mushroom cloud over N.Korea. The N.Korean government now says that the big mclargehuge explosion was a planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project. Riiiight.

Colin and Condi are all too quick to dismiss the possibility that it was a nuclear test. But wait...weren't these two eager to spread the fear of Iraq giving terrorists a nuclear weapon? "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," is how I think Condi put it. And that was talking about Iraq, a country that didn't actually have a functioning nuclear program. But North Korea, a country that has promised to go nuclear and which might have already? Nah, it must've been something else. Nothing to see here. Place head firmly in the ground. Maybe we'll find out in a couple of years that there was a P.D.B. that said, "North Korea determined to detonate nuclear bomb," and Condi will describe it as a "historical document."

I know I never complain about anything, anything at all, but indulge me for just a minute.
During the first week of classes, I attended and then subsequently dropped one of the courses that I had registered for. At the first class meeting, the professor assigned each student a chapter from a book to read, outline, and then present to the class at the next meeting. As a courtesy, I emailed the professor just to say that I changed around my schedule and would not be registered for the course this semester.
The professor then emails me back and asks if I could go ahead and show up to the next meeting, present my chapter anyway, and then leave. Now, ostensibly the professor has read this book several times before and would have no trouble summarizing a chapter for the rest of the class. And it just so happens that the course that I picked up to replace that one meets at the same exact time, and so I can't show up. But beyond that, the whole point of dropping the class is that I don't want to be doing the work for that class. When you drop a class, you stop going, and you stop doing the work. If we all didn't adhere to those rules, we'd have chaos.
But because I'm a sucker (and more importantly, because I don't want to get on anyone's bad side quite yet), I asked if it would help if I put together an outline of the chapter. I shouldn't have even done that, and I already regret making the offer because I have other things to do...like work for the courses I'm actually, you know, registered for.
Anyway. There you have it. I'll never again use my blog as a venue for gratuitous complaining. Never ever.

New Slogan: "America: We're Not as Bad as al Qaida."

At least, that appears to be the point that Rumsfeld is making.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, responding to allegations that he fostered a climate that led to the prisoner-abuse scandal, said yesterday that the military's mistreatment of detainees was not as bad as what terrorists have done.

"Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head off on television?" he asked. "It doesn't."

So just as long as we're not cutting off anyone's head in the middle of Must See TV, then what's the big deal? Is that the standard that we're holding our government to these days?
Why isn't Don Rumsfeld in an 8 by 8 cell, that's all I want to know. He has admitted to ordering the holding of "ghost detainees", a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions. But hey, it could be worse, right?
Ugh.

I'm running low on outrage these days. I just don't have the energy to get worked up about Dick Cheney's eBay economy or the Republicans' refusal to renew the ban on assault weapons. And tomorrow is 9/11, so you can bet that everyone on the television will be doing their best to exploit that day, and Shrub will wrap himself in the memory of the worst intelligence failure in history and use it to justify every damn thing that his crew has done since. Jeebus.

"what about the senator graham/saudis/aid to terrorists bombshell story? I wanna hear abou that!"

oh yeah. so all that redacted information in one of the 9/11 reports? well, turns out that members in the saudi government were backing al qaida. but your brave leaders don't want you to know what really happened because saddam hussein was a bad man, and america and the world are safer b/c saddam is locked up (so long as by "safer" you mean "less safe due to a worldwide increase in terrorist acts").

next thing you know, there's going to be a story telling us that shrub blew the surplus on tax cuts for the rich. it's nice that the media runs on such a reality lag. it'll probably take 20 years for most people to realize that the iraq war was a huge mistake, and then another 10 after that for republicans to start questioning the service of vets from the iraqi war.

oh, and george bush was still doing coke when poppy bush was president. it sure would've been nice had these stories been pursued four years ago. but NOOOO, the liberal media were more interested in making fun of al gore for saying that he invented the internet (which he didn't say; what he said was that he backed early legislation which funded a project that later evolved into the internet).

sorry for the lack of caps and the lack of embedded links. it won't happen again.

On demand blogging: Here are the classy ladies who were given the boot from the reunion. (Photo credit to Mike, the other faceless person in the reunion photo below...and he's not as short as that picture makes him look)

Nothing to do Wednesday night at 8:00? I hear "60 Minutes" should be good.

Yes, that really is what I look like. Me and another loyal YLH reader (I'm on the left this time) at our Halloween party in 1999. A bit too much "Spooky Punch" that night.

Me and a loyal YLH reader at the reunion.

10 Year Reunion Recap. Rather than run through all the details and provide a play-by-play account of the weekend, I'll just outline some of the highlights and observations.
1. With a few exceptions, most people look pretty much the same as they did ten years ago. Overall, I'd say that the women tended to age better than the men. And while I didn't win the baby-face award, I was told that the years hadn't taken much of a toll on me.
2. Not much awkwardness. Most people I talked to had been nervous about showing up. One guy I was friends with said that he drove to the park where the picnic was on Saturday, slowed down, but said to himself, "I just can't do it," and drove back to his parents house. His dad told him to get back in his car and drive back over to the picnic, and so he did. But the nerves were for nothing, at least once people had a couple of drinks in them.
3. I had a few drinks in me. But not so many that I wasn't able to drive myself home at 3a.m.
4. A couple of times, a person would say, "James, I remember when you did this or that or said this or that," and I had to say, "Sorry, that wasn't me, I don't know what you're talking about." On a few other occasions, my response was a sheepish, "Yep, yep, that was me alright. Thanks for remembering that one." For example, there was a time when four of us were at a local pool after hours, being young and irresponsible. A large hose was coiled up in the corner of the lounge area, and apparently I stood up and announced, "Everyone, don't move...don't panic, but there's a huge snake in the corner of the room." Had to be there, I guess.
5. After a couple of hours at the Saturday night event, it was as if only a few weeks had passed rather than ten years. But that's not to say that nobody had matured (questionable in a few cases).
6. Real estate in southwestern and central Virginia is damn affordable.
7. I didn't find out anything scandalous that went on while we were in high school, and I'll have to wait ten or fifteen years to find out if anything scandalous went on after the reunion festivities.
8. It was a real party once two women who were being far too loud, drunk, and obnoxious were escorted out of the hotel and ushered into the cab that the hotel management had called for them. Classy ladies. They won the award for "Most Likely to be Hating Life in the Morning."
9. I wasn't able to get Klint effed up. Another time, my man. You and me and a case of Zima (the embarrassing drink of choice among the kids in 1994).
10. Most people seemed to have enjoyed themselves, but my guess is that just like ten years ago, we'll all again head our separate ways and most of us won't see each other again for another ten or fifteen years. But, I'm glad that I went.

I could go on and on. But that was probably really boring and not nearly as exciting as you had hoped. Such is life.

I swear I'll have a new post soon. I'm still regrouping from the weekend. I'll have a full wrap-up tomorrow.

Awkward conversations, here I come! I'm headed down to Roanoke for my 10 year high school reunion. Who's successful? Who's not? Who cares? It's gonna be a freakshow.
I'll be sure to provide a complete recap of the events when I get back.

Thank goodness that's over. Amazingly enough, I was able to avoid watching any of the speeches live at the RNC this week. I don't think there's been such a display of restraint since the last time Zell Miller saw a baby he didn't eat.
The Daily Show coverage was spectacular. Again, catch tonight's replay tomorrow if you missed it.
From what I could glean from some of the bobblehead cable commentary is that Shrub had nothing to say about any accomplishments over the last four years other than blowing up a bunch of shit and being "strong" (but wrong).

60 days. Just 60 more days. And then hopefully no person with the last name "Bush" will ever be able to run for elected office again. They had one of Shrub's nephews, Pierce Bush, on CNN earlier in the evening along with his uncle Marvin Bush and Poppy Bush. My best guess is that the kid was one of Neil's. Where was Neil? Probably out spreading v.d. with some hookers. (just googled, and yeah, it was one of Neil's kids...absolutely obnoxious by the way...but not as obnoxious as Billy Bush)

Halliburton hijinks. Give 'em another no-bid contract! They're just so precious when they break the law by bribing foreign officials. (link via Des)

Unfit for Cancun. Pleasureboat Captains for Truth.

O'Really. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the biggest huckster of them all?

Is this what they call progress? Bushco says that they're winning the war on terra, but terror-related deaths are on the rise worldwise:

NEW YORK - As speakers at the GOP convention trumpet Bush administration successes in the war on terrorism, an NBC News analysis of Islamic terrorism since Sept. 11, 2001, shows that attacks are on the rise worldwide — dramatically.

Of the roughly 2,929 terrorism-related deaths around the world since the attacks on New York and Washington, the NBC News analysis shows 58 percent of them — 1,709 — have occurred this year.

1709?!?! And we're only 2/3 of the way through they year. What more proof do you need that Bushco has been absolutely incompetent when it comes to foreign affairs? Or maybe since less than 60 of those deaths are Americans, Murkans just don't care so long as it's other countries' people dying in far-off places.
And that number doesn't even include the thousands who have died in Sudan.

Since we're talking about what John Kerry was doing in the early 1970s, it's only fair that we talk about what Shrub was doing around the same time. Apparently, it involved pissing on cars. But who cares because John Kerry might not have been in Cambodia on the exact date when he claimed to have been. (get the day pass if you need to)

And if you missed The Daily Show, you have to catch a rebroadcast tomorrow (7 EST, or 11:30 EST). They had an absolutely fabulous video on Bush titled "Words Speak Louder Than Actions" in which they show the absolute disconnect between the Bush rhetoric ("world safer") and the reality ("world fucked"). They also showed the flip-flop on Osama bin Forgotten from "dead or alive" to "not about one man," how Bushco pulled a bait and switch with Saddam, played up fears of WMD, and then changed that to "weapons of mass destruction related program activities." Awesome.

And apparently nobody told turncoat Zell Miller and Oily Dick Cheney that the theme of the night was to be "Land of Opportunity," not "Grumpy Old Men."

A case of the crazies. On the way home from school today, I stopped to fill up the car with some $1.87/gallon gasoline (cheap for around here). After filling up the tank, I went inside to buy a Diet Coke with Lime. As soon as I get in, the attendant starts yelling about how he almost forgot to turn on the 5:00 news because he wanted to hear about the hostage situation in the Russian school. Then he starts yelling about how we need to "kill all the fucking Arabs" and that "George Bush is too soft on terrorism." (the guy wasn't white in case that's what you're thinking) All I want to do is to pay for my soda and leave. But he yells some more about something about France and a couple of journalists taken hostage, and again how we need to "kill all the fucking Arabs." And really, how do you respond to that? I muttered something like, "Yeah, well George Bush has made everything worse."

What I *should* have said is, "My wife is Palestinian, do you think her family back in Palestine should be killed?" But really, I just wanted to get out of there, and that probably wouldn't have furthered my goal. Nothing beats complete strangers being totally inappropriate. Well, nothing except the Bush twins at the RNC last night (apparently even Faux News thinks they bombed).

Oh, sweet justice.

The county election supervisor whose confusing ballot design contributed to the turmoil of the 2000 presidential election became the butt of late-night talk show jokes and the target of death threats. Now, she's lost her job.

Theresa LePore, the inventor of the butterfly ballot that was scrutinized during the presidential recount, lost her re-election bid to remain Palm Beach County elections supervisor.

With all 692 precincts reporting, challenger Arthur Anderson had 91,134 votes, or 52 percent, while LePore had 85,601 votes, or 48 percent.

In other news, it's day three of the RNC, and I've stuck by my pledge not to watch any of the coverage (though I hear that it is craptacular). Though I saw that Ahhnold said that people who are pessimistic about the economy are "economic girlie men." Which side of compassionate conservativism is that? Man oh man. That's just so wrong on so many levels.

September? Already??? Seems like just yesterday....