squidbag

Primary Election Day

Due to a Florida law prohibiting run-offs in certain kinds of races (Florida has lots of really solid election law, of course) today will decide any number of races, and will push others closer to endgame, which is happening on November 2nd.  By the end of today, we will know who is going to be the next County Commissioner from the 1st district, the abominable Mike Whitehead, the gentlemanly (but tainted) Mr. Wilson Robertson, or one of the newcomers, Dorothy Davis or my guy J.E. Jones.  Yesterday, WEAR-TV channel 3 did a little interview with all four candidates, and we spent the day organizing our last minute stuff.  Last night at midnight, I met one of our campaign volunteers, Mr. Jonathan Johnson, in the parking lot of the Beulah Free Will Baptist Church, and we drove all over the district, putting signs for Jones out in front of the polling places.  I skewered my foot on one of the posts, and my sock is getting red from me walking around on it today.  Jonathan and I were tailed by a grey van with a disabled sticker in the window for two of our stops, and we ran into the guys for Gary Willis, a Dem running against our incumbent, Ronnie McNesby, like, five times.  Just when you think you're a freak for being out at midnight in the middle of a churchyard with a shovel and a stick, feeling like you're putting a political stake in the vampiric system of universal primaries - you see them, other freaks, and you feel okay about it again.

Also to be decided today are the futures of Richard Pope, candidate for State Representative Dist. 2, Clinton Couch, candidate for County Judge, and Arlene Costello, candidate for superintendent of schools.  I single them out because my first year's fortunes here in Escambia County have been linked to these people.  Pope did a lot of work with me early on, but stopped, and Couch did likewise, seeming to take a less active role in his campaign.  They're both running against fairly demonic people, but I think they're both going to lose their primaries, Pope because he got outflanked, and Couch because he got outworked and outspent.  Arlene, on the other hand, has worked hard promoting herself, and with the race she's in - well, the results should be interesting.

I will post the results tomorrow, and you can see how well I know my stuff.

Dreaming of dreamland

Henry Rollins said, “Sleep dep makes everything really neat.” Douglas Adams describes a sensation of “nerve endings sending back signals about what every part of the floor is like, as if it were a deeply worrying thing which they had never before encountered.” Those statements, taken together, sum up pretty well how I feel right now. My left eye is watering uncontrollably, my desk is a mess of partially finished art and signs, ashtrays (and things that used to be something else, but have been pressed into service as ashtrays), food wrappers, soda bottles, water containers, and the typical et cetera.

I work with politicians. I teach them to jump out of the water for fish, clap on command, and raise taxes in the name of family values. One of the guys I’m doing some work for right now has let us have some fun with his campaign, and you should go check out his commercials at www.jones4county.org. The primaries are next Tuesday, which means all the world revolves around next Tuesday until we get to the end of next Tuesday. That means I was in my shop the last three nights ‘til 2am, 9pm, and 1:30am respectively, making last minute sign shit for people running for office.

Last night, my wife’s grandfather broke his leg. He’s 92, and it’s a spiral fracture of the femur, and they wanted someone to stay with him through the night, just to make sure that he didn’t push through the morphine haze and try to get out of bed (you’d be surprised what a motivated stubborn person can accomplish) and also just to be there if he came to in the middle of the night, almost certainly disoriented and in a cloud of drugs and pain. And who knows more about drugs and leg pain than yours truly? That’s right, Nathan Walker does. But since he was unavailable, I slept sideways on my keys from 4:40 to 6:15 this morning in a hospital room chair.

Today has been odd, to say the least. Like walking through a field growing something you’ve never seen before, and that something turns out to have suckers and needles on it. I wish I could go to sleep and sleep like my son. Splayed out in the middle of the bed, no mortgage, no hassle, no keys in his pockets, having dreams about umbrellas on trains, Spider-Man, Dora, and Bob the Builder, or maybe dinosaurs.

A nap. That’s what I need.

Why We're Angry.

This morning, at about seven-thirty, as I was going about my standard morning routine of showering, cleaning the fur off my teeth, and really getting a good rolling boil of anger going - President Monkeyface helped me make this last thing a little easier.  I heard that clueless yutz on the radio as a part of the following exchange:

INTERVIEWER: How would you respond to the assertion that there is a lot of anger out there in America right now, and how do you deal with this when you're on the road?

DUBYA: I just don't see it.  All this anger that's supposedly out there - I just see thousands of people, standing together, waiting to see us.  I just don't see all the anger.

Wow.  Okay, I think I have figured out a way that an average citizen, like myself, can help out the President of the United States.  He doesn't see the anger?  Turn your squinty eyes this way for a few minutes, motherfucker, and I'll show you what anger's all about, you self-centered glob of vomit, you piece of shit in the rain, you poor excuse for a human being, you joke of a chief executive, you.  Face your smirking, arrogant semi-evolved head my way for one fucking second, and I'll explain it to you, and then you can have someone read it, put it into smaller words, then read you that before bedtime, you doddering bozo.  First, you're a privileged idiot, a former drunken cheerleader who accepted the family free ride into the limelight.  Second, you wouldn't even be the fucking President, except that your family's friends and your business criminal asshole compatriots stomped McCain into the ground with a truckload of money, and then your waterhead bumpkin brother twisted the votes of a semi-literate state in your favor.  You stole a chapter or three from the Kennedy handbook and dare to call yourself a Conservative anything.  Shithead.  Third, once you became the bad fucking awful fart-during-Shakespeare imitation President that you are, you proved yourself to be a puppet of the wealthy, giving them the tax breaks I imagine you promised to get their money for the election, and placing the tax burden square on the middle class, you submoron, you.  This stimulated the economy so well, that the dip in jobs created and the reduction in sales has caused the Fed to scramble, and given your opponents all the "It's the economy, stupid," munitions they'll ever need.  Then, on the heels of the worst terrorist crisis in our country's history, when American sentiment was riding high, and people were united - YOU SQUANDERED THE GOODWILL OF THE PEOPLE I LIVE AROUND EVERYDAY TO WAGE A CHEAP VENDETTA ON YOUR DADDY'S ENEMIES THAT HE WAS TOO IMPOTENT TO DESTROY DURING THE FIRST ILLEGITIMATE WAR!!!  You're an infected cock, the child of blood and shit, you rotten fuck.  You fucked the people's unity right in the ass, aborted it just as it was being born.  If there's a Hell, may you sweep up after the souls who shit themselves in terror.  Your war is about to claim its 1000th American life, to say nothing of the lives of many other nations - Iraq, for example, and your lies about connections between Osama bin Laden, the man we were never goddamned destined to catch by bombing the desert into blown glass, even if we have fancy daisy-cutter bombs, and Saddam Hussein, (real scary in his hole) have long-ago collapsed.  You are responsible, along with your nasty, evil cabal of advisors, apron strings, and puppetmasters for the worst economy in my life, the ugliest and most brutal war for all the wrong reasons, the theft of a nation (or two)'s sovereignty, the theft of a political election, perversion of our system, using racism and people's worst fears against them, and being a smug prick.  I am weary of hearing you spout the same tired bullshit at your rallies and appearances, like you're a fucking comedian on tour, doing the same material (the "pro-trial-lawyer" joke springs effortlessly to mind) in every city, like you just thought that empty pablum up that night before the show.I condemn you to die, choking to death on your own rectum, as it dashes up to join your brain as the two organs realize how much they have in common.  I weep for the heroic pretzel that tried to bring you down.  Alas, poor snack food, we hardly knew ye.

I hope that helps, Monkeyface.  I hope you see the anger, smell the rage, taste the bile, and feel the hate.

I know I feel better.

Now, if I could just fit all of that on a bumper sticker...

My Dream & Porter Goss

My 30th birthday is in November, on Veteran's Day, which used to be Armistice Day, which was a marking of the end of the First World War.  Eventually, though, as Americans got involved in more and more costly and brutal wars, it was decided by a guy from Kansas (which I used to believe was a mythical state that only spawned imaginary people, like a chick who flies over rainbows, a flying man of steel and an ex-Senator who pops Viagra) that this day should be used to recognize all of our Veterans, so they changed the name.  I share my birthdate with Dostoyevsky and Vonnegut, and the actual day with Leonardo DiCaprio.  The upshot is that there are always parades on my birthday, and the downside is that there's never any mail. (I did get a Fedexed birthday card one year from a good friend, though.)

Anyhow, I only mention my birthday because, due to it being somewhat significant, I have been recently asked by a few people what I want, and what I want is this; I'd like to sleep for a month.  I'd like to hit the hay on Halloween night, and not get up 'til December 1st.  I realize that this will have me waking in the middle of the American Christmas Orgasm, but I'll be rested and think I can handle it without giving the smackdown to too many bell-ringers.  So, whatever you guys can do to pitch in and help me realize my dream, I'd appreciate it.

On another note, (we'll call this one a G-Sharp) Michael Moore, who I have firmly mixed feelings about, (but then, who doesn't?) has released an interview excerpt with Porter Goss, Congressman from the great (meaning large) State of Florida, and recent nominee of President Monkeyface to head up the CIA.  It goes a little something like this (hit it):

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Goss is quoted in an interview transcript.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

Like the ability to think analytically, do research, and walk erect.  I know one thing - I'm keeping my fucking eyes peeled for those Arabists.

Back from the virtual grave...so to speak.

Hello.

Once upon a time, there was a guy who moved to a faraway land where democracy doesn't function like you'd expect, where the President's brother helped him steal an election, and where Naval Aviation, tourism, and sunshine are even more important than say, people.  I'm talking about Florida, friends and neighbors. Pensacola, to be specific, which is in danger of being hit by hurricane even as I write this.  The guy, as you may very well have guessed, is me.  My name is Charlie, and I live in a small white speaker box on a desk in a tasteful office in Southern California.  No, actually, my name is Garrett.  My small family and I moved to Pensacola, Florida to start a new business, and be closer to my wife's family.  (She's the one, along with my buddy Jon Broad, who inspired me to do this.) This has had mixed results, many of which I plan to feature in this blog.

This is my second attempt at blogging, joining the world of blog, the blogsphere, hopping on the blogtrain.  Once, while enjoying a good flagon of particularly watered-down blog in a French bloghouse, I had my left femur removed by an Irish...no, actually, what happened was this: I started my 1st blog last year, which you may recall as 2003, and it was hacked by some fiendish, repugnant piece of shit who I hope rots in a hole reserved for the vilest anal bandits with infected members.  That fucker wrecked my work, and while it was not brilliant, it was mine.  Some of it may get republished, because, after all, we rebuild when the terrorists come, right?

So, check back periodically, and everyone will get hurt.  Probably.