More on Korea, Part I

There's a lot I want to say, mostly involving wild links and conspiracy theories that my whiskey-fueled brain is lining up doublepluspretty in my head, but for now, you need facts, so here they are.

http://www.pagef30.com/2010/11/liveblogging-north-korean-attack-on.html

This guy is in Korea right now, gathering all the information he can as it happens. I'll be watching him religiously, as should you. More later. selah

Tambour

So it is, then...

It's over every single newsfeed right now. Reddit is going wild. Anyone who keeps up on current events in glued to their computer monitor. You'll remember a while back that I talked about Kim Jong-Il and his bat-shit-crazy way of running a country. I called him a sociopath, and said he was a problem that would have to be dealt with soon.

A few hours ago North Korea launched an attack on Yeonpyeong Island, 50 miles off the coast off the northwest coast of South Korea. Official reports say that "dozens of shells" were fired (taken from cnn.com, reuters, msncb, and a few others) although some reports are saying that as many as 200 shells (South Korean broadcasts) were launched. South Korea returned fire and scrambled jets almost immediately. Four military personnel and 16 civilians were wounded.

No one is saying anything about the *why* yet, and that's the damned important part. If this is just more posturing, then the DRPK just found themselves in a world of shit. If this is an act of all out war, then EVERYONE is in a world of shit. Keep in mind, this attack comes only a week or so after the DRPK announced that it was continuing with its nuclear program, a few months after we finally got a look at the man who would rule over North Korea next, and not much longer after North Korea allegedly sank a South Korean corvette.

I don't know if this is war yet. But I'm glued to my screen and I'll be posting as I learn more. Good night, and Good Luck.

Mahalo,

Uncle Tambour

It's Been Slow Today

So I'm going to leave you with a little pre-sermon reading material. More will be discussed tomorrow. In the meantime, write me. Ask me questions. Offer to birth my children so that my clearly superior genes might be carried on through the generations. You know, the routine shit.

Mahalo,

Uncle Tambour

http://www.cracked.com/funny-6527-christine-odonnell/

Required reading. Guess what we're talking about tomorrow. Sleep well, my little plague pustules.

There will be more

I promise.

Everything I write about, all the stories, all the news...it's all real. And as long as it's happening, I'll talk about it.

I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. You're stuck with me. Smile.

I am REBORN

Like Christ, I have arisen. Unlike Christ, I bring beer. And where the Lord spake thus of peace and of loving thy neighbor as thyself, I bring a message of wrath and Most Righteous Anger.

I'm not going to make excuses as to why I let this blog founder; I got busy and stopped writing. Stopped being a Journalist, for a while there. And then one morning I woke up and saw myself in the mirror, and I was disgusted: gaunt, hollow, sallow, uninformed. I was becoming what I hated most. So I drank myself into a stupor, fired up the computer, pulled up my newsfeeds, guzzled mug after mug of day-old coffee, and got wired. I read my last post, and I remembered what I started for; I remembered that someone needed to give a shit and make other people give a shit, and it might as well be me.

So let's talk. There's some things I want to say about Christine "Not a Witch" O'Donnell, but most of them can be summed up with the phrase "cataclysmic numbshit." I'll rant when I feel like it, but there's something burning in my blood that needs attention called to it.

Right now, in the state of Florida, there's a law that has backing. This law says (paraphrasing from the Miami Herald) that, in addition to the old song and dance from Arizona giving police the ability to question anyone's citizenship upon "reasonable suspicion," "Even if an officer has "reasonable suspicions" over a person's immigration status, the bill says, a person will be "presumed to be legally in the United States" if he or she provides "a Canadian passport" or a passport from any "visa waiver country." Those countries, by the way, are all in Western Europe, apart from four in Asia.

"What's this mean, Uncle Tambour?" I hear you cry. It means, children, that there is a law being drafted that says racial discrimination is A-OK in Florida, and brown people need to watch their shit. Keep IDs on them at all times. Be able to prove their citizenship and legal status at the drop of a hat. Just brown people. Maybe black people, too, I don't know. But, anyone Not White. When did David Duke win Florida?

One last thing: Rick Scott, the man who backed this bill, and who is also running for Governor of Florida, went on record as saying that the bill was worded as it is to be "comfort language to Canadians." Because the majority of non-Americans in Florida are absolutely, no doubt...Canadians.

Letters will be written. Whiskey will be involved.

I'm back from the dead, you bastards. Be glad to see me.

Mahalo,

Uncle Tambour

Fear and Loathing, Even Still...

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Well, well...

It seems that I am becoming Popular. People are reading my wisdom, soaking it in.

I approve of this.

Thus: a warm and happy greeting to all new readers from Dear Old Uncle Tambour. I have been promising for some time a Big Break, a piece of Importance, more than my prattling and rambling and calling Kim Jong-Il a bastard. Because all of you have taken the time to read, I am delivering, making good on my word.

Spread the news of my coming, kids. Tell everyone you know to read me. More readers encourage me, and I know you guys want to be entertained.

Mahalo,

Uncle Tambour

Where's Hawkeye When You Need Him?

I've known a lot of crazy people in my time. Hell, you probably have, too. Someone you know takes anti-psychotics or anti-depressants or MAOI inhibitors or drinks too much or doesn't like themselves. Someone you know is not right in the head. Most people you know aren't right in the head; that's my theory, at least. You might be that someone you know. The simple fact is, life in America (possibly the world in general) fosters and encourages mental instabilities of some sort or another. Because of this, there's a whole spectrum of whack-jobs out there, a sliding scale of madness. I did a brief stint in a homeless camp and saw a lot of the uglier side there, the different flavors and levels of bad lunacy. Mostly you get the harmlessly insane, the ones who had been dealt such shitty cards in life that they needed to move out where the buses don't run in order to cope. These are usually the guys drinking beer after cheap, watered down beer, one minute your best friend and the next whispering panic-stricken half-sentences about the Reptilian shape-shifting politicians that run the Illuminati and all fuck one another to keep the bloodlines pure. These guys are the staple of any Friday night out on the town. You nod, buy 'em a beer, maybe chuck a buck or two their way.

Later into the night, lurking in the darker parts of the city, you find the more rattled, the ones whose screws have long since fallen off and rolled under the workbench. There are the deeply violent, the men who will lash out at anything come near, the ones whose minds are constantly feeding them input that does not, cannot, will not exist, and it's terrifying. The worst nightmare you ever had on acid fucking Freddy Krueger and ejaculating the screams of children and it never stops. And then there's the truly sad cases, the men and women and children so far gone that they're never coming back. There was a guy in my old homeless camp like that, a 'Nam vet named Gary. The rest of the camp pitched in what they could to buy Gary his medicine, probably just codeine, something to ease the pain off while the clock ticked by. Gary never spoke once. I never saw him move. He only gestured with his right hand; it didn't stop the other homeless guys from including him in conversations, passing him beers, letting him speak his peace with his mangled, arthritic conducting. It was one of the kindest things I'd ever seen, a more human gesture than anything I see from most people with comfortable lives.

Like it or not, insanity is a very real part of life today. There are a number of things that can be done to help the folks that need it. Lower the price of mind-drugs, sink more funding into public health care, tip the bums more so they can buy whatever puts them at ease. I'm no lobbyist, nor city planner; I can't give anyone the answer to making the mentally ill, homeless or otherwise, well and healthy. I do know one thing, though. Do you want to know what you don't do with crazy people?

Let them run their own fucking country.

Let's talk for a bit about this guy. Kim Jong-Il has been running North Korea since God took a break for a day, and the country is a festering shithole because of it. According to Kim's official biography, his birth was nothing less than an event of celestial magnificence, a miracle marked by the appearance of a double rainbow and a new star in the sky. Little baby Kim is born on one of Korea's sacred mountains and a new ball of gas erupts in the heavens to commemorate the heralding of the Chosen One. Shit, when I was born my old man got all his friends hammered on 2-dollar martinis and tried to throw me off the roof of the Grand Hotel in some North Florida port town. I was a tenacious little fucker even back then; I'm pretty sure the old man still has the scars.

But I digress. Kim's official biography claims that he was born on a sacred mountain and that the universe shat itself in happiness when he popped out of the womb, theoretically finishing up a copy of "Das Kapital" and writing his doctoral thesis on flaws in capitalism before the doctor smacked his ass. This, like everything else Kim and Kim's people have said about his life, is an utter fucking lie. Look at his wikipedia page; littered with contradictions. "Born on a sacred mountain" becomes "born in a dingy Russian hospital where his father was soldiering." "His mother died in childbirth" is apparently Korean for "she might have been Glocked and left to bleed out." My personal favorite? Kim had a brother, and the kid drowned at the family mansion. Quoting the wiki: "Unconfirmed reports suggest that 5 year old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident."

And it only gets better from there. Kim comes to power in '97 after his father dies and the nation of North Korea is handed its death sentence. This diminutive lunatic with cartoon-character hair has been trying to play North Korea up as one of the bad boys of the world while starving the nation as hard as he can. Kim is literally in control of everything, having self-appointed titles longer than my rap sheet that put him at the top of every food chain you could think of. He and his cronies have used the nation as their own personal playground while trying to seem like a legitimate military threat to that ever-present enemy, Anything Not North Korea. Kim has long-since been famous for pissing people off by ignoring UN sanctions against nuclear capabilities and brushing aside loud complaints from nearly every human rights group on the planet that the people are starving, the economy doesn't exist, and, as of late, some truly heinous health care situations. So why bitch now, Uncle Tambour? Surely there have been crazymen running nations come and gone, so why North Korea? Didn't we stop caring about Korea when M*A*S*H ended?

Because it fucking matters. Even if you want to ignore the fact that this little bastard is keeping an entire nation poor, isolated, and crippled, even if you want to disregard the inhumane conditions, you can't ignore the fact that Kim Jong-Il has started fucking with us. They blew up a South Korean boat (which they vehemently denied, long after the remnants of their torpedo were found), have been laundering money via the Russian mob, and the nation isn't seeing a dime of it. While the populous starves and dies off from illnesses we cured decades ago, Kim Jong-Il and his homeboys have an estimated $4 billion slush fund. For those rainy Pyongyang afternoons, you know.

Bill Maher said it best, I think: "North Korea is like a four year old waving its penis around. Yes, we all see, now can you put that away, please?" in reference to DPRK nuclear policies. Now that little four year old has started pissing on all the furniture and leaving steaming turds all over the glass cutlery. Half of the politicos this side of the Prime Meridian are itching to get Kim and Co. out of power and into shallow, unmarked graves, and I'd like to see the same thing. The actual removal will be tricky; the Russian mob is doing most of North Korea's money laundering, and we can't afford to piss off Russia. That means no direct confrontation, no spearheading a righteous campaign to bring democracy and a little fucking food and medicine to a downtrodden people. No, I'm thinking coup d'etat, Bay of Pigs style. Hopefully we'll get it right this time. Any way you slice it, Kim Jong-Il needs to go if we want to avoid loss of life on a bigger and more tragic scale than anyone wants to see.

Hyeogmyeong ,

Uncle Tambour

PS: I mean it, you bastards. Say something. I need input to ignore, dammit, it's a crucial part of the writing process!

Whiskey, Raisin Bran, Pall Malls.

Breakfast of champions. I am not drunk. Fuck your inquiries.

There are some things in life that make a man feel more alive, more manly. Grilling a steak is a pretty good one; there's an inherent machismo in the act of cooking meat on an open flame that makes your average guy feel like his testicles are the size of Hummer tires. If you've killed, skinned, and butchered whatever you're grilling yourself, there's a major added bonus; you are primitive hunter, taker of life and wielder of the flame, that which giveth and that which giveth naught, he to be feared by all lower on the food chain! Primitive and dominant all at once. If my parole officer is reading this, THAT is why I was in the Wal-mart wearing nothing but a loincloth and a cigarette. I was buying marinade for the animal I brutally murdered. With my teeth. If my parole officer would still like to know why I was flinging fruit at the other customers and at one point smeared most of my body with red Kool-Aid while claiming to be Gotar, Avenger of the Hill People and dispensing ancient Barbarian justice to anyone wearing anything resembling a blue vest, I will still plead the fifth. I won't lob a turnip at him again, though.

One of those acts that gets overlooked a fair amount is mowing your lawn. It seems like a tedious chore, pushing a dinky engine on wheels attached to a barely sharp piece of metal, and more often then not it seems like nothing got done. The grass is maybe half an inch shorter; whoopty shit. Nothing to write home about, much less strip down to a loincloth and hunt the neighbor's cat over. But Uncle Tambour learned the hard way what mowing your lawn COULD be, how it can turn easily into a struggle for dominance...man versus nature in pure form. You see, I've never been what you might call a "mechanically gifted" person. When things break, I either call a repairman, buy a new one, steal a new one, "borrow" one from the neighbors, or (at the very worst) Google instructions on how to fix it. This seems to work well about ninety-seven out of a hundred times. So, in the way of the world, those other three are big, important, and hard to fix. Like a septic tank pump. Or a lawnmower.

My lawnmower did not just break down. Oh, no. It caught the mechanical equivalent of ebola and leprosy and died a miserable, nauseating death, hemorrhaging motor oil and bad gas, dropping rusted, rotted parts all over my lawn. I recognized that this was a degree of repair that was well beyond me. I also recognized that I had no money, and borrowing from the neighbors was not an option. You try asking for so much as a goddamn cup of sugar when you've gone stomping up and down the street in a Dollar Store Aloha shirt and a grass skirt, waving around a homemade spear and bellowing "I AM LONO RETURNED! BRING ME PELE, WHORE OF THE VOLCANOES, THAT WE MAY COPULATE!"

I was not on drugs. Drugs are bad for me.

Maybe three weeks went by, maybe a month before I secured the finances to pick up a new lawnmower. By this point, my lawn hadn't grown so much as erupted. My front yard looked like a National Park and my backyard looked like Da Nang. Every time I checked the mail I had to fire a few warning shots off to spook any snipers lurking in the crab grass. I looked at my freshly assembled 150 CC lawnmower and felt like Eisenhower on June 6th. The odds were against me, the casualties would be high, and I wouldn't come out of this the same man...but it could be done. I channeled George Patton long enough to give the wet-behind-the-ears piece of steel a motivational speech that even had the neighbors applauding. The next two hours were spent hacking away at Mother Nature Gone Wild, the Earth Spirit let loose in New Orleans on too many Margaritas. At some points a war of attrition, at some points a fight to survive, but in the end Savage Man prevailed. Grass that was three feet tall at its kindest was now docile and meek. Fear me, for I am Man, called Ruler of the Lands, shining sharp, spinning justice into the dark places of the world!

Now, kiddies, before I leave you today, there's some homework to be done. There's a link at the bottom of the page; click, read, take notes. We'll talk about the subject matter tomorrow. In the meantime, fear not the VC, keep the guns clean, watch thou for the mutant, selah.

Uncle Tambour

PS: Comment, you sons of quadrupeds. Write me. Question my wisdom. Don't just sit there like lobotomy patients and absorb my magnificence! DEMAND CREDENTIALS, you fucking pigs! Have I taught you nothing? Fear me not, for I am harmless. Wink. uncle.tambour@gmail.com

The Link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704518904575365793062101552.html

News, Always a good way to start

I have not slept. Sleep is for mortal men. I am the by-product of a celestial orgy: Thor, Artemis, Hera, Enkidu, all going wild and rabid, thrusting and gyrating as only bored omnipotents can. Through the sweating, grunts, and discharging divinity, I slithered out from under the ass-crack of some Higher Power. I stood, looked around, and realized this was the best it got. This was what all the poor bastards down on the blue rock were aiming for, boredom and fucking.

I could feel the anger welling up in me. I grabbed the nearest god I could, castrated him, and strangled him to death with his own steaming genitals. From his teeth I fashioned the first typewriter and tore off layer after layer of his skin to use as paper. I precariously balanced my weapon of choice on his breastbone and rolled my flesh-paper in, eyes sharp to take in every detail. It was at that point that I realized I couldn't write because I didn't know a language yet. As the fury crystallized into solid fire that nestled itself comfortably in my aorta, I sighed, packed my things, and left. If pressed (and possibly drunk) I will admit that I burned the place down and stole Kali-ma's wallet first. I used the Destroyer's money to buy myself enough cigarettes to asphyxiate Mongolia and a prostitute for a young peasant boy. That boy, I found later, became The Once and Future King, Arthur Pendragon. I hold myself personally responsible for this.

Along the lines of divinity, certain news articles have jumped into my feed I HAD to share with my constant readers: a certain Father Kevin Gray, a pastor at Sacred Heart Church in Connecticut, has been arrested for embezzling church funds. The Good Reverend skimmed some 1.3 million dollars off the top, middle, and bottom of the church's funds and blew most of it on a combination of ridiculously nice suits, long stays at the Waldorf Astoria, and a number of escorts. Not content to leave the church's money on the dresser the next day, the minister kept a string of regular escorts and let some of them have credits cards in his name that billed directly to...well, you can guess. The swindling minister got his start when he was transferred to Sacred Heart Church in Waterbury while his mother was dying some distance away in New Haven. He felt that "the church owed it to him." One of the clauses of "owing it to him" was apparently that Gray could lie freely through the skin of his rectum to bleed parishioners for their every last penny. One of Gray's favorite lines was that HE was dying of cancer...think about that next time you drop a few bucks in the collection tin. The priest is currently being held for a $750,000 bond. No members of the flock at Sacred Heart could be contacted to see if they'd chip in for the preacher's bail.

On the other, much less chipper side of the world, Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani, a woman accused of adultery, could be stoned to death "at any moment" for an adultery charge. Originally sentenced to 99 lashes, she was cleared of a murder charge against her husband in 2006, and all seemed right with the world. Her two boys, glad that Mom was no worse for wear minus the bloody tatters that remained of her back, were eager to go on living a standard Iranian life full of fun, praying, and fear of government leaders. This all changed when the judicial committee decided that she hadn't *really* learned her lesson and, with a vote of three out of five judges, sentenced her to a truly Biblical end. What's interesting here is that in the Iranian penal code it says that for someone to get a death sentence for adultery, there must be "at least four eyewitnesses-- either four men or three men and two women." I love math, too, Ayatollah. Her son has been making trips to Tehran on a regular basis to try and get an appeal from the head talker-to-god-plus-runner-of-country, but so far has gotten exactly shit. At the very least the judicial committee hasn't spouted a line of bullshit about the "will of Allah," opting instead for the more rational justification of "because I fucking said so."

Clearly before I left my place of birth I missed a few gods I should have killed. I am making a list, and arming myself with holy water, garlic, and copies of Nietzsche's works. Behold, sky-dwellers, for I am Prometheus unshackled! I am he which is called "Light-Bringer," and in the shadows and darkness I shall emblazon Truth unto all that I see!

Someone get me a Pale Horse and some coffee. It's gonna be a good day.

Mahalo,

Uncle Tambour.

Learn to People, and Let's Talk

I haven't been updating as much as I'd hoped, and there is good reason for this; my immune system decided that it was too good for the likes of a bum like me and took off at the start of last week. Fever set in, and then a hacking cough. Between those two some unknown and stealthy trickster god crept up on me when I wasn't looking and shoved a wad of packing tissue down my chest, lodged just past the diaphragm and making breathing an irritating task. At this point, I took that simply as further argument to stop breathing, which had been my desire for at least a day...and then came the insomnia. I don't know if any of my readers have been physically unable to sleep while in the throes of a hacking cough for any amount of time. It was three days before I got any sleep, and a week before I got decent sleep. The vision quest would have been magnificent if not for the sobbing wheezes of my lungs.
 
But I have been made manifest again! Praise be unto Nyquil and bouillon cubes and Nyquil, also to Livetta for nursing me back to health and taking care of me and having WAY more patience than I could have ever deserved. Show her some love in return and read her blog; the stuff I hack together pales in comparison.
 
Now, because I was ill and therefore unable to be productive (You try cleaning guns when you double over every time you cough. Want to see where your finger slips, Gambling Man?) I decided to return to a favorite website of mine, Omegle. The premise is simple: you talk to someone, anonymously. That's it. You connect with another human being somewhere in the world and speak about whatever you want without the judgments and burdens of identity. Think of the implications of that; confessions, deep and honest discussions, anything you want to say but are afraid to can be communicated freely. This should be the ultimate forum for political, philosophical, religious discussion; there's no judgment here because the both of you are words on a screen, ideas being exchanged. I was eager to get back on; I wanted to talk Sarah Palin and Catholicism and war and death and taxes and literature. I wanted to go on long rants about The Good Doctor to anyone who had read him, seen the movies, heard of him.
 
What do I get instead? 
 
“hey asl”
 
Now, for those of you un-savvy with technospeak these days, “asl” is a request for your age, location, and which set of genitalia you posess. That immediately tosses anonymity to the side, and gives a pretty clear picture of what most people are on omegle for; an online swinger's club. There are any number of places designated for this sort of thing, and omegle ain't one of 'em. Not too long ago, there was a little blurb at the top of the page saying “There are better ways to start a conversation than 'asl!'” This was such a problem the developers changed the website to make note of it. And really, what kind of opening is that, anyway? “asl” is widely accepted as shorthand for “I'm horny and want to use you as masturbation fodder if you conform to a few standards?” and that's okay, I s'pose. I mean, there are real-world equivalents. These are called “pick-up lines.” But these require basic social tenants, like being able to hold a conversation and being deceptive enough to convince the other party that you really DO care about more than getting laid. The good folks on omegle I ran into decided to go in for something a little more blunt. When I told them that I was XX amount of years, living in X state, and male, they'd log off. Change that to 'female...' and you get some interesting responses...

“u horny baby?” “u wanna cam” “imagine im ur dad and wan to have sex wit u”

These are direct quotes. There are, in this world, people who approached a stranger in that exact manner. Human beings exist that think it's acceptable to talk to another person in such a fashion. Here's a practical experiment; go up to someone and say the following : “I want to see you naked so I can masturbate to you. I don't care about your name, but how old are you?” See what happens. Don't ask me to post your bail. Now, just because you can't see another person doesn't make this any more acceptable in an environment not designated for that kind of interaction. I'm not trying to go all socially-responsible-good-boy-journalist on you, here. I normally don't give a fuck. I'll let Livetta talk about the sociological and gender-binary issues here; she understands that mojo way better than I do. But I spent days trying to have an intelligent conversation with someone, anyone, and mostly got propositioned for sex. Come on, internet. Anonymous people are people, too.

There is a bright side to this. After one and one-half days of no sleep, I went a little insane. I decided in my haze that if these folks were going to ignore social conventions, then, dammit, so was I. So every time someone asked for my “asl” I'd paste the entirety of “The Great Gatsby” into the conversation box and yell obscenities, ro start lecturing on it, until they went away. I got a little preemptive, though. I knew I had a problem when I demanded to see someone's thumbs to prove their humanity and then said “Hi.”
 
I'm still on omegle most nights. I'm still looking for good conversation. So go on. Head there. Talk to me. Let's discuss. But if you ask me for my “asl,” shiteyes, then prepare to suck my novel.

Mahalo,
Uncle Tambour.

Www.omegle.com Come talk to me.
Livetta.blogspot.com You really want to read this blog. I promise.  

A Few Thoughts on the D.C. scrap

"I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink."
Sarah Palin

I tend to rag on Sarah Palin a lot, don't I? She's earned it. Sarah Palin might be one of the most useless pseudo-politicians in a big crowd, contributing nothing to the McCain campaign except a plug on a dying skit comedy show, still trying to talk a big game after she's made it staggeringly clear that she has little to no idea of how Washington works, and showing up frequently in my newsfeeds. All of 'em. She's replaced George W. Bush as the GOP media darling, and I've got a problem with this; George had an affability to his incompetence, a kind of good-ol'-boy air that he was just trying his hardest, that he was just a simple Texan man trying to make some good in this world by running a big chunk of it. That air, of course, fell apart when anyone remembered that he was a Bush, that he had grown up around politics--that his father was President. Sarah just reeks of uselessness. She's got no amiability to her; George, I have said many times, might be surrounded by fundamentally evil human beings, but I'd still like to have a beer and talk baseball with him. I don't want to be in the same state as Sarah Palin. That quote, I think, sums her up: all enthusiasm, no coherence.

Speaking of Palin, not too long after she announced boldly that she'd like to take a stab at the White House herself (though she'd still also gladly endorse John "The Zombie" McCain), Sam Wurzelbacher threw himself back into the spotlight again, this time to let America know that John McCain "ruined his life." For those who get their news entirely from headlines, Mr. Wurzelbacher is better known as "Joe the Plumber," the popular face of "middle America." He was, for a stint, the GOP's wet dream; a good looking middle-middle class American calling the face of the opposing party a "Socialist." Now Joe has turned his back on McCain and Palin, saying that the McCain campaign has "screwed up his life." He said that he supported McCain as "the lesser of two evils," but now makes a fantastic comment that "at least [Obama] was honest about what he was going to do."

That's the kind of politics I have to admire, and the kind of political sense I like. Wurzelbacher made a point of saying that he still firmly disagrees with more or less everything Obama and his administration represents, but he at least tosses him the grudging admiration of honesty. I felt the same way about a few politicians on the ticket in 2008, and I'm sure I'll feel the same way about whoever they line up at the abbatoir in 2012.

In other news, happy Lent to all my Catholic followers. Here's to hoping that your fast went well, that your ashes didn't get in your eye, and that those 40 days without whatever go by quickly.

P.S. Here's an interview of Wurzelbacher with Sean Hannity. In true Fox News form, about as fair and balanced as a skinhead in a synagogue:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,586332,00.html

Question for my readers: what do you think of Hannity's questioning here? I'll share my thoughts later; I want to hear from you. Mahalo!

Wide-eyed, fully aware. Every single stimulus sending my nerves into overdrive. The moment of anticipation, the pause between the leap off the cliff and the fall. One pause of terrifying glory. One of the few moments when you've genuinely woken up.

Today was dead-slow, as far as news goes. I realized that George W. Bush has completely faded away, dropped entirely under the radar, and I was impressed. This was the President that cameramen practically tripped over themselves to catch, if only for the entertainment value. The blurb-writers loved him; in four years he offered up so much imparseable pseudo-wisdom that there are now a dozen "Bushism" calenders, each with different quotes from "Dubya." Anyone know what he's up to these days? According to wikipedia, he's in Texas, writing a book about his stint as Fearless Leader of the Free World. But when was the last time he was on camera? His farewell address? Did he attend Obama's inauguration? I don't remember. Still, you've got to admire that. The man has his time in the limelight, and he's bowed out quiet. I suppose the media has plenty to say and a few more talking heads to pick up the "Absurd Quotes" quota.

I wonder what goes through his head these days. I can't help but think about the lambasting from....more or less everyone left of center, and I wonder if he still thinks he made the right decisions.

This is sloppy writing, and I know it. At this point, I'm writing to get words on the page. get my head used to the idea of thoughts going directly from brain-meat to onscreen with no in-between. I'll need that pretty soon.

In other news, the B-Radical harmonica got released today. I'll do a write-up of my experience with the B-Radical, but I'll say this; it lives up to the hype.

Entry One: Early Morning Ramblings

It's 8:11AM, and I've spend the past three hours watching local news channels and googling how to clean guns. Such a combination of inane pseudo-reporting and firearms blended with ungodly amounts of caffeine I pour into myself every night leads to some unusual thought processes. Stuff like "If Richard Nixon were still alive, would he have gotten into a fistfight with John McCain?" and "I should bombard the news stations with bizarre anonymous letters simultaneously praising and condemning every nuance of the program I could possibly think of." And, of course, there was the granddaddy of the strange ideas, the one that still makes perfect sense and probably will until I get some sleep:

"Hey, I've got stuff to say. I should start a blog!"

And so here we are, you and I (whoever you out there might be.) First thoughts of the day are on something I caught on the Channel 4 Power Hour or whatever the hell they're calling these "newscasts" these days. Sarah Palin is on the chopping block again, this time for keeping Q&A session notes written on the palm of her hand. The more tongue-in-cheek commentators have taken to calling this "Palmgate," because the '-gate' suffix won't get old in American politics until we can't actually remember who Richard Nixon was. Whatever your thoughts on Palin's actions and how that reflects on her leadership/intelligence/right to claim that she is, in fact, sentient, what this really shows is that Sarah Palin has now become the GOP's rodeo clown. While the Party scrambles to pull itself together in time for the 2010 elections (and starts pre-gaming for the Big Race in 2012,) they're tossing Sarah "Can See Russia From Her House" Palin, the woman who has been cited as the number one reason John McCain lost the Presidential election, in front of all the cameras for her to do her thing. From making less-than-offhand comments about taking on Barack Obama in '12 to the latest Palin "whoopsie" moment, Sarah is exactly what the GOP could use now: a face to make them look comfortable and ridiculous (certainly anything but a threat!) while the real players get lined up. It's an opossum's play, and it's working fantastically at the moment.

So who are the "real players?" I'm betting Scott Brown; this is a young, charismatic, good-looking guy with a fantastic military record who sits just on the fence enough on major issues to be relatively comfortable to most people. He's certainly bold enough to go for the Big Chair after a two-year stint in the Senate. Word has it that Jeb Bush will run; I wish him the best of luck. He was a miserable soul-sucker of a governer and the brother of the most lambasted president since Jimmy Carter. The Bush name, if you ask me, is still mud in D.C. Some familiar faces, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney...more thoughts on all this later. Just something to keep in mind: watch how often Sarah is in the media, and remember the giggles when the GOP starts swinging.